Originally Posted by
worstpilotever
do you think perhaps the plane coming from LAX will go to SGN at night and the plane coming from LAX in the morning will go to BKK? I am not saying that the specific plane will be used to do both, but there will not be 2 planes dedicated to running both these routes. It was specifically designed to be able to use 1 plane, as I understand it, they company would not be doing the service if 2 planes were required.
That still takes 6 planes. You have a plane going from LAX-HKG. Then it goes to BKK and sits for 7 hours and then flies back. Then it flies back to LAX.
Another plane has to do the same thing and go through SGN.
That whole event can't be done with 4 planes because 15 + 3 +3 +13 is 34 hours, plus its on the ground 4 times (one of which is 7 hours and the other 2 times its over 2 hours.
So if you took snapshots of 787s Flying LAX-HKG-BKK-HKG-LAX and LAX-HKG-BKK-HKG-LAX at different times you'd see between 4 and 6 planes.
Also your "1 plane theory" does work with the published schedule. you have a plane that doesn't land until 0935 but its taking off at 0900. That's 2 planes. Plus 4 to fly 2 daily HKGs back and forth. 6 total.