Originally Posted by
Cruz5350
Totally agree with this, I haven’t been in the industry for very long but I can’t imagine the schedules were like what we have today. Now it’s computers driving every metric for schedules dollars costs etc etc. It blows my mind how tight everything is run these days and the only component making sure metal isn’t bent is two humans of which managers across the board think we should get rid of one at a time…
I dunno...there are some great articles from old aviation magazines from the 60s and 70s where they talk about airline schedules, and it made me feel tired just reading about it. It was either Len Morgan or Gordo Baxter from Flying magazine -- they were both columnists and Len Morgan retired as a Braniff 74 CA –– anyhow, one of them wrote of a typical schedule on the 727 at Braniff or TWA or somewhere. I want to say it was 7 legs and it reported at midnight, and they did this 4 or 5 nights a week.
I don't have the article handy but it was an eye-opener. We have it WAY easier than those guys did back in the early days of the jet age.
Plus, a monkey can watch the AP follow the FMS route that we simply download from CPDLC. Now imagine old-school jet route/ airway navigation using steam gauges and dual VORs and DMEs. So much more work.