Airlines with multiple departures from one airport to another in a matter of hours

[Bayum]

I’ve been playing about on FlightRadar for a few months now and one thing that seems to crop up are a number of flights with departures from airports only to have the same operator schedule a further few flights to the same airport.
One example that jumps out at me is Johannesburg to Heathrow. BA have flights at 19:20, 19:45, 21:20 and 22:15.
Two questions: Why? Is Johannesburg really that popular?
What other operators are there with similar scheduled flights?

 

[Gaelan]

I don't know about that route, but I suspect the answer is that it's sufficiently popular that they need more than one plateful of capacity; but various timing constraints (people broadly would rather not leave or arrive during the small hours; Heathrow has noise rules that limit when flights can land) mean there's a narrow range of hours flights can depart.

 

[ld0595]

I thought BA just have 2 flights per day to Joburg?

BA also have two similarly timed flights from Hong Kong - 2300 and 2340.

Goes without saying that they have a great frequency in the evenings from JFK - near enough one every 30/40 mins in the evening.

 

[DanNCL]

Several short haul routes from many airlines to/from Heathrow would meet this criteria. Heathrow-Dublin is an exceptionally good example, as both Aer Lingus and BA for much of the day have intervals of less than two hours between departures. I seem to recall that Lufthansa have not far off an hourly service between Heathrow and Frankfurt for a chunk of the day too.

I’ve been playing about on FlightRadar for a few months now and one thing that seems to crop up are a number of flights with departures from airports only to have the same operator schedule a further few flights to the same airport.
One example that jumps out at me is Johannesburg to Heathrow. BA have flights at 19:20, 19:45, 21:20 and 22:15.
Two questions: Why? Is Johannesburg really that popular?

I thought BA just have 2 flights per day to Joburg?

The way airline timetables are often shown, it can appear that there are more flights than there actually are. You'll often see a table showing every flight due to operate over the course of the week, the y axis for the flight and the x axis for the day of the week. The days each trip operates will be marked. In the specific case of Heathrow-Johannesburg only two flights will run on any given day.

The same way of displaying the timetable would in theory make it appear that there were BA flights from Newcastle to Heathrow at both 06:00 and 06:05, but in reality both departures are the same flight (BA1321) just timed to depart five minutes later on certain days of the week.

 

[Bayum]

Several short haul routes from many airlines to/from Heathrow would meet this criteria. Heathrow-Dublin is an exceptionally good example, as both Aer Lingus and BA for much of the day have intervals of less than two hours between departures. I seem to recall that Lufthansa have not far off an hourly service between Heathrow and Frankfurt for a chunk of the day too.

The way airline timetables are often shown, it can appear that there are more flights than there actually are. You'll often see a table showing every flight due to operate over the course of the week, the y axis for the flight and the x axis for the day of the week. The days each trip operates will be marked. In the specific case of Heathrow-Johannesburg only two flights will run on any given day.

The same way of displaying the timetable would in theory make it appear that there were BA flights from Newcastle to Heathrow at both 06:00 and 06:05, but in reality both departures are the same flight (BA1321) just timed to depart five minutes later on certain days of the week.

So even though there are x timetabled, only two will fly?

 

[DanNCL]

So even though there are x timetabled, only two will fly?

There are only two timetabled for any given day. The timetable will usually show all the departures throughout the week, with something to mark which days each flight is timetabled. I'm not 100% sure how services such as FlightRadar24 interpret this, it's possible that they may see timetables like this and get confused, or they may have access to a completely different set of data I'm not sure.
It's rare these days you'll find such a timetable in the public domain, usually the way to look it up is through looking at arrivals/departures or by using a booking engine which of course won't show this.

 

[Ted633]

Don't know whether it still happens occasionally, but a few years ago I noticed there were three Air Transat flights arriving into Gatwick, all from Toronto (I think) and all landing within half hour of each other! That must have been a tad confusing at the departure gates.

 

[Bayum]

There are only two timetabled for any given day. The timetable will usually show all the departures throughout the week, with something to mark which days each flight is timetabled. I'm not 100% sure how services such as FlightRadar24 interpret this, it's possible that they may see timetables like this and get confused, or they may have access to a completely different set of data I'm not sure.
It's rare these days you'll find such a timetable in the public domain, usually the way to look it up is through looking at arrivals/departures or by using a booking engine which of course won't show this.

https://www.britishairways.com/travel/schedules/public/en_gb

I searched for Saturday, Johannesburg to Heathrow and those are the results. There’s only two codes but 5+ different times. What does this mean?

 

[Flying Snail]

https://www.britishairways.com/travel/schedules/public/en_gb

I searched for Saturday, Johannesburg to Heathrow and those are the results. There’s only two codes but 5+ different times. What does this mean?

It clearly shows that each day has 2 departures with the times being different on some days to others. The same flight number is used as they will still be unique for each given day.

 

[bluenoxid]

What makes this Saturday “interesting” is that the clocks fall back in the UK. I think the system is trying to show that really badly.

 

[DanNCL]

https://www.britishairways.com/travel/schedules/public/en_gb

I searched for Saturday, Johannesburg to Heathrow and those are the results. There’s only two codes but 5+ different times. What does this mean?

It’s a system error.
Only two flight numbers are shown, BA56 and BA54 so only two flights will operate. Bookings are done by flight number rather than time so they’ve only sold two flights and those passengers will be kept up to date as to what time it’s departing.

It clearly shows that each day has 2 departures with the times being different on some days to others. The same flight number is used as they will still be unique for each given day.

I can see why at first glance it may appear there were more departures than there actually are from that page. But yes as you say, the flight number is unique, each flight number will only be used once each day.

 

[Cloud Strife]

There are plenty of examples. For instance, Barcelona-Madrid on Iberia:

07:00
08:00
08:45
09:15
09:45

With a lot of other departures throughout the day, as well as a couple of Vueling departures in there as well. Frankfurt-Munich is pretty much operated on a clockface timetable at xx:15 from 06:15 to 21:15.

 

[zero]

This is the case for Heathrow to Dubai, Doha and Hong Kong, as well as many US destinations. Dubai has up to 10 per day. Hong Kong used to be 8 per day before covid.

Airlines do try to spread them out during the day but because of timezones they often have to bunch a few together. US to Europe flights have to either depart early morning US time and land late evening Europe time, or afternoon-night US time and land morning Europe time.

Asia to Europe flights generally have to be overnight because that's more popular.

 

[miklcct]

Asia to Europe flights generally have to be overnight because that's more popular.

What is the reason that overnight Asia - Europe flights are more popular? In the past when I lived in Hong Kong, I used to fly daytime flights to Europe when I was going for sports competitions. Most of the daytime flights available were from SkyTeam, with Aeroflot generally the cheapest (its premium economy tickets were selling cheaper than other carriers' economy tickets), so I accumulated a lot of Aeroflot miles in the process.

The use of daytime flights allowed me to have onward travel in the evening, such that I would be ready for a morning event the day afterwards.

 

[zero]

What is the reason that overnight Asia - Europe flights are more popular? In the past when I lived in Hong Kong, I used to fly daytime flights to Europe when I was going for sports competitions. Most of the daytime flights available were from SkyTeam, with Aeroflot generally the cheapest (its premium economy tickets were selling cheaper than other carriers' economy tickets), so I accumulated a lot of Aeroflot miles in the process.

The use of daytime flights allowed me to have onward travel in the evening, such that I would be ready for a morning event the day afterwards.

I think many people feel that it's a waste of a day. When you fly overnight from Asia to Europe your "night" is 15 hours long, you get a full day of work/your last day of holiday in Asia, then you have lots of time to sleep yet you arrive nice and early in Europe time.

Perhaps sleeping on a plane doesn't leave your body in good condition for a competition immediately on arrival, so it made sense for you to arrive in the evening and sleep on the ground.

But for someone going on holiday, a daytime flight means they have to wake up very early Asia time, and by the time they get on the plane they will be quite alert (maybe after a short nap) when they should actually be having a long sleep (as it's late in Europe). Then it's a very long flight. By the end it's very late Asia time but you still need to do immigration and onward travel - if you have an airport hotel it may not be so bad, but Europeans may want to drive / train / bus home.

I don't know what Aeroflot schedules used to be for HK to Europe itineraries, but 9hr+4hr flights may require a different sleeping strategy to 12hr+1hr (with western Europe stopovers)

 

[miklcct]

I think many people feel that it's a waste of a day. When you fly overnight from Asia to Europe your "night" is 15 hours long, you get a full day of work/your last day of holiday in Asia, then you have lots of time to sleep yet you arrive nice and early in Europe time.

Perhaps sleeping on a plane doesn't leave your body in good condition for a competition immediately on arrival, so it made sense for you to arrive in the evening and sleep on the ground.

My first Asia-Europe flight in recent years was for a trip to a world championship. The westbound flight was on an overnight Finnair from Hong Kong to Helsinki then a morning flight on Norra (Nordic Regional Airlines - a wet lease for Finnair) to Kaunas. After alighting at Kaunas my team manager still needed to hire a car to drive few hours to the competition town, however I was extremely sleepy at that point and I wouldn't contemplate racing, or even driving, off such a flight immediately. As a result, for my subsequent journeys, I took daytime flights every time if I didn't need special arrangements such as stopovers.

But for someone going on holiday, a daytime flight means they have to wake up very early Asia time, and by the time they get on the plane they will be quite alert (maybe after a short nap) when they should actually be having a long sleep (as it's late in Europe). Then it's a very long flight. By the end it's very late Asia time but you still need to do immigration and onward travel - if you have an airport hotel it may not be so bad, but Europeans may want to drive / train / bus home.

I don't know what Aeroflot schedules used to be for HK to Europe itineraries, but 9hr+4hr flights may require a different sleeping strategy to 12hr+1hr (with western Europe stopovers)

From an Asian's perspective, a daytime flight means that I have to wake up at my normal commute hours to catch the 11:35 flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, when I should be quite alert. Using my example in 2018, the connecting flight to Helsinki landed at 20:00 (Eastern European Summer Time). I took a coach from the airport to Turku and the coach there at 22:55. I then had a good sleep for the race the morning afterwards.

So that Aeroflot flight was at a perfect timing for daytime travellers, combined with the fact that its tickets were the cheapest, it resulted in me gaining elite status on that airline.

 

[zero]

From an Asian's perspective, a daytime flight means that I have to wake up at my normal commute hours to catch the 11:35 flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, when I should be quite alert. Using my example in 2018, the connecting flight to Helsinki landed at 20:00 (Eastern European Summer Time). I took a coach from the airport to Turku and the coach there at 22:55.

2255 EEST = 0355 HKT

I've done a daytime flight from Asia to Europe 3 times in my life:

SAS HKG-ARN 0900-1430
I had to wake up at 0430 in Hong Kong which was very difficult, and I couldn't sleep on the flight because by the time things had quieted down I was very alert. From Sweden I had a connecting flight and by the time I got to my destination airport it was midnight in Hong Kong time. I still had a 1.5 hour bus journey to get to my place of residence.

CX HKG-LHR 1230-1800
I had to leave my home in HK at 0900 so there was no time to achieve anything that day.
Arrived in the UK at 3am HK time, long queue for the e-gates, then 1 hour bus ride + walk in the dark / cold to get home. Then I had to get cleaned up and do a bit of unpacking so only got to bed at 11pm=7am HK time. Because my body was set to Hong Kong time, I only managed to sleep for 3 hours to 2am, so by the time I got to work at 9am, I was already very tired and achieved nothing that day.

If you are a tourist going straight to a hotel this flight could work.

BA BKK-LHR 1100-1830
Same as above but I stayed up all night to try and be sleepy for the flight as I was in business class, but it didn't really work as I woke up at noon UK time and it was a very long 7 hours on the ancient BA 772

 

[Bletchleyite]

CX HKG-LHR 1230-1800
I had to leave my home in HK at 0900 so there was no time to achieve anything that day.
Arrived in the UK at 3am HK time, long queue for the e-gates, then 1 hour bus ride + walk in the dark / cold to get home. Then I had to get cleaned up and do a bit of unpacking so only got to bed at 11pm=7am HK time. Because my body was set to Hong Kong time, I only managed to sleep for 3 hours to 2am, so by the time I got to work at 9am, I was already very tired and achieved nothing that day.

I personally quite like those "long day" westbound day flights. You're knackered on arrival, but I find if I go to bed as soon as I get home/to the hotel and sleep 12 hours* it resets my jet lag in one go. Much nicer than arriving early morning and having to fight to stay awake all day.

* If you wouldn't, then a sleeping pill, or even a drowsy antihistamine, might help.

 

[zero]

I personally quite like those "long day" westbound day flights. You're knackered on arrival, but I find if I go to bed as soon as I get home/to the hotel and sleep 12 hours it resets my jet lag in one go. Much nicer than arriving early morning and having to fight to stay awake all day.

Fair enough but I don't have any problem staying up on a westbound flight arriving at 5-6am, because my body clock is already lunchtime by then. Just don't make plans to go out that night.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Fair enough but I don't have any problem staying up on a westbound flight arriving at 5-6am, because my body clock is already lunchtime by then. Just don't make plans to go out that night.

The problem with that for me is that I can't sleep on planes. For me to sleep I need all three of dark, horizontal and quiet - even in business or first class planes fail to deliver two of those three. Thus if I've done a night flight with a 6am arrival it becomes a very unpleasant endurance exercise.

Night flights do work for me eastbound because they shorten the day, though, so the endurance exercise is only very short.

 

[Jimini]

I personally quite like those "long day" westbound day flights. You're knackered on arrival, but I find if I go to bed as soon as I get home/to the hotel and sleep 12 hours* it resets my jet lag in one go. Much nicer than arriving early morning and having to fight to stay awake all day.

* If you wouldn't, then a sleeping pill, or even a drowsy antihistamine, might help.

I use the "worker party flights" a fair bit from HKG > LHR on Friday nights with Cathay @ 22:55 or 23:35 (oh how I miss VA's old service before Covid). Always a good crowd on board, but once you've been in the air for an hour or so, it's lights out and have a good kip before getting back to Heathrow at 5:30-6:00 ish. Then you get the time back you lose from the outbound journey -- the eastbound Saturday early evening departure / Sunday early evening arrival basically wipes out your weekend. Getting to the office at 9am on a Monday morning when your body is screaming at you that it's 1am and you should be in bed is proper hard work.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I use the "worker party flights" a fair bit from HKG > LHR on Friday nights with Cathay @ 22:55 or 23:35 (oh how I miss VA's old service before Covid). Always a good crowd on board, but once you've been in the air for an hour or so, it's lights out and have a good kip before getting back to Heathrow at 5:30-6:00 ish. Then you get the time back you lose from the outbound journey -- the eastbound Saturday early evening departure / Sunday early evening arrival basically wipes out your weekend. Getting to the office at 9am on a Monday morning when your body is screaming at you that it's 1am and you should be in bed is proper hard work.

Having "a good kip" on an aircraft is not on the agenda for me, unfortunately. Not even in business class. Too noisy, too much movement and too much light.

By contrast, a 30 hour day and going to bed at about 6-7pm on getting home resets my jet lag pretty much in one go.

 

[Jimini]

Having "a good kip" on an aircraft is not on the agenda for me, unfortunately. Not even in business class. Too noisy, too much movement and too much light.

By contrast, a 30 hour day and going to bed at about 6-7pm on getting home resets my jet lag pretty much in one go.

Horses for courses, I guess. I'll have a decent snooze flying westbound overnight and land back in the UK all sorted on the jet lag front. Eastbound flights are the ones I find challenging.

 

[zero]

When you are able to select between daytime/nighttime flights, how much extra would you pay for your preferred timings if it was more expensive? I generally would only pay about 10-15% / £50-£100 more and just put up with the bad (for me) timing.

On BA you don't really get a choice if you are going anywhere besides the US anyway, and it's the same for most airlines on the majority of their routes which are once daily or less frequent. (Referring to long-haul only of course)

 

[Cloud Strife]

What is the reason that overnight Asia - Europe flights are more popular?

I think it's related to business/first class travellers, as in they can sleep overnight and then go to work in the morning. A random example: Hanoi-Istanbul. The departure is 22:30 local time, with an arrival at 05:30 Turkish time. The onwards flights in Europe all depart around 07:30-09:30, meaning that you can arrive for lunch and afternoon meetings at a wide range of places on Turkish Airlines.

The same goes in reverse. Turkish Airlines and the Middle East airlines all prefer departures to Asia around 01:00-02:00, so you arrive around lunchtime in Asia. That means, roughly, that it's possible to depart between 15:00-19:00 from European airports before connecting around midnight in Istanbul/Middle East.

Economy passengers on such journeys don't really have to worry about work in the morning, so getting a good sleep on the plane isn't such a concern.

The problem with that for me is that I can't sleep on planes. For me to sleep I need all three of dark, horizontal and quiet - even in business or first class planes fail to deliver two of those three. Thus if I've done a night flight with a 6am arrival it becomes a very unpleasant endurance exercise.

A friend spent years doing Heathrow-New York in the worst possible way. He would take a Monday morning flight from Heathrow that would get him to New York before lunchtime, do a full day's work there, then on Tuesday/Wednesday night, he would fly from New York to Heathrow and go straight to work on Wednesday/Thursday morning until the end of the week. It meant that he had a proper weekend in London, but the New York-London flight was always a killer for him as he could only get around 5 hours sleep at the most.

 

[zero]

I think it's related to business/first class travellers, as in they can sleep overnight and then go to work in the morning. A random example: Hanoi-Istanbul. The departure is 22:30 local time, with an arrival at 05:30 Turkish time. The onwards flights in Europe all depart around 07:30-09:30, meaning that you can arrive for lunch and afternoon meetings at a wide range of places on Turkish Airlines.

The same goes in reverse. Turkish Airlines and the Middle East airlines all prefer departures to Asia around 01:00-02:00, so you arrive around lunchtime in Asia. That means, roughly, that it's possible to depart between 15:00-19:00 from European airports before connecting around midnight in Istanbul/Middle East.

Economy passengers on such journeys don't really have to worry about work in the morning, so getting a good sleep on the plane isn't such a concern.

Plenty of economy passengers go straight to work after arriving in the morning (from their holiday)!

Plenty of business/first class travellers are on leisure and not working before or after their flights.

Connecting in the middle of the night is hardly conducive to being fresh on arrival, even in business class. I expect most people travelling for work where they must be in a meeting soon after arriving will fly direct if a flight exists.

I've kind of gone off business class after covid. For one thing there is a lack of deals (for obvious reasons) where you could take an awkward routeing to get the price down. The other is that I've learnt that I can handle one night of poor sleep as long as I sort out my sleeping in the 7-10 days before and/or after. Previously I would try and do too much in a short time, and even having a bed on the plane doesn't help if you are overly exhausted.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Plenty of economy passengers go straight to work after arriving in the morning (from their holiday)!

They're better than me! I can't imagine stepping off a long haul flight across multiple timezones and then going straight to work after being in economy. At least with a lie flat bed, you've got a chance of sleeping for a few hours.

Connecting in the middle of the night is hardly conducive to being fresh on arrival, even in business class. I expect most people travelling for work where they must be in a meeting soon after arriving will fly direct if a flight exists.

Of course, but a lot of flights just aren't there in long haul from Asia, especially to airports like Barcelona. That's what makes the TK/ME3 model so powerful, because they can offer a huge amount of connections to European airports from Asian ones, with everyone coming through their airports in the middle of the night for morning arrivals. I don't understand it personally, because I don't know who wants to be wandering around an airport terminal at midnight, but well.

 

[zero]

Of course, but a lot of flights just aren't there in long haul from Asia, especially to airports like Barcelona. That's what makes the TK/ME3 model so powerful, because they can offer a huge amount of connections to European airports from Asian ones, with everyone coming through their airports in the middle of the night for morning arrivals. I don't understand it personally, because I don't know who wants to be wandering around an airport terminal at midnight, but well.

Yes, agreed. I think most people just look at the price and don't think too much about the timings.