Overscheduling

What is overscheduling? That's what the airlines call it when they schedule more flights than the airport can possibly handle. It's just another way the airlines ignore the flying public. American Airlines CEO Don Carty admitted to USA Today, "the accusation that airlines overschedule is absolutely right. Of course we overschedule." The airlines do this because they consider it a "competitive" advantage. Right. Lying to your customers is always a good business practice.

Here's a chart showing the scheduled departures from SFIA on May 30, 2002. Each block represents the number of scheduled departures for a 15 minute period. While this data is for SFIA, all airports allow this. The problem is that no one is in charge. Since deregulation, neither the FAA nor the airports can tell the airlines what to do. And the airlines can't talk to each other about it.

The data is from the OAG(Official Airlines Guide) and covers 488 departures. That's 94% of what SFIA claims to have handled on the average day in 2001. I used the top 25 domestic destinations, the top six international destinations, and the top six commuter destinations. The "top" destinations are from San Francisco Bay Area Airlines - Air Transportation Overview. By Roberts Roach and Associates for the Regional Airport Planning Committee, July 1999. The airfield capacity of 47 take-offs per hour, or 11.75 per 15 minutes, is from the RASP.