Originally Posted by
deltajuliet
Yeah, AA side is pretty inefficient. 16 hour 4-days, 1-leg days, stuff like that. Supposedly the Ejet schedules out of IAH are glorious, but even the CRJ ops out of Dulles are a big improvement over what AA gives us.
Supposedly it's a combination of factors including shorter flight lengths, AA's disdain for overnighting aircraft in base, an unwillingness to adjust anything, and letting their marketing department determine schedules above all else. It also doesn't help to have two or more regionals splitting the scraps in one base, versus letting each regional have its own base exclusively and using all the flying therein to make efficient and productive schedules.
United seems to factor the cabin amenities/ancillary sales capability on 76-seaters into their "capacity vs. demand" matching model much more than AA--i.e., on longer flights or "wealthier" city pairs--where there is higher potential demand for business class/econ-plus tickets/food & liquor sales--they'll preferentially put an E175 on it vs. a 50/70-seater in their gauge-matching models, knowing that 12 biz class + 58 coach tix will more than make up for the 6 empty reduced-fare coach seats with the econ-plus and upgrade fees + food/alcohol sales...on a 3-4 hour flight at least.
American's model appears to be a much more rigid "match capacity to demand" model, with much less weight given to how specific aircraft types (50/70/76/mainline airframes) can squeeze more ancillary revenue out of a "less than full" aircraft.
Disclaimer: I'm just an average line pilot--these are just anecdotal observations based on my experiences with both systems. I could be 100% wrong, but it is interesting to contemplate the obvious differences in equipment-allocation philosophy between the majors--all I know definitively is that AA uses 76-seaters with a much, much different philosophy than United...that is a verifiable fact.