I assume that the MSY time is Central and the JFK time is Eastern, but even with the time zone changes, it’s still an hour longer coming back than it is going.
Both flights are nonstop (as opposed to direct, which might include a stop).
Is there some kind of northward airflow this time of year that would make that big of a difference in the flight time?
FWIW, going up there I’ll be on an A320 and coming back, some sort of unspecified Embraer (I believe all JetBlue has is E190s). Would this make a huge difference? I know what the Airbus is, but I"m not all that familiar with the Embraers.
Both aircraft have a published maximum cruise speed of Mach 0.82. The actual cruise speeds used may be a little slower for economic reasons but there wouldn’t be a big difference so the difference in flight time is probably mostly due to the weather as described by the other posters.
Airlines get judged and rated on on-time stats. Therefore, they will build more “wiggle room” into the schedule when flying out of major, busy airports. Your flight out of JFK probably had at least 45 minutes built in to try to make sure the flight arrives on time.
I once took a regional flight out of O’Hare and apparently everything wasn’t screwed up that day as it usually is. It was a flight of about 250 air miles and arrived almost an hour early. Needless to say, that flight didn’t hurt their on-time stats.
Another factor may be spread out airports. For instance in Amsterdam, the newest runway is really far away from the terminals. It probably takes 20 minutes to taxi in compared to a closer runway.
It’s the one on the left in this diagram:
(Apparently the long-term plan is to build a second terminal out there.)
That’s probably a pretty significant factor. I don’t know how busy MSY is typically at 5:50 pm, but I can tell you that there are dozens and dozens of flights trying to depart Kennedy in the 7:00 pm hour. Even if you push back from the gate right on time and there are no other problems, you’ll have a decent wait in the queue to take off at JFK. The airline knows this and builds this into the scheduled flight times.
That would apply in both directions of the same route. Schedule do take into consideration airport delays but that is based on historical data. An airport such a ATL will get extra time tacked on because it’s usually backed up and it shows up in the data (I use to plan a/c routes for a freight company).
Yes, but I imagine that trying to get out of JFK at 7:35 pm gives you a relatively bigger hit than most of the other airports in the country (other zoos like Atlanta and O’Hare perhaps excepted). I expect that even the worst departure delays in New Orleans are just a picnic compared to Kennedy.
Yes. That’s why you use historic data (which include aircraft type, route and departure time). My former company had set up a program to monitor competitor flights between airports. If we were thinking about a new route we could look at our own historical data or use the real time information that is publicly available. This also applies to seasonal schedule changes. Everybody has at least a Winter/Summer schedule that adjusts for the changes in the jet-stream.
If you wanted to know how your flight was going to go you could pull up a map of the jet streamand see if you’re going to fly through any major winds. The flags point in the direction of the wind and the hash marks denote speed. Triangles are 50 knots, long hash marks are 10 and short hash marks are 5. Aviation maps would have more detail but I can’t link a passworded site.
As others have said above, the difference is about 90% taxi time, and a few percent enroute time.
As I’ve written about before, I used to operate a flight that left at the middle of a hub peak and had 1 hour of taxi-out time scheduled plus 50 minutes of air time, plus 5 minutes of taxi-in time. Total time 1:55.
We then turned around and went back to the same place, arriving at a non-peak time. 5 minutes taxi-out, 52 minutes air time, 5 minutes taxi-in = 1:02. IOW, slightly longer in the air but just over half the time gate to gate.
In general, arriving at a Top-Ten airport like JFK , ORD, etc., the schedulers will add 5-10 minutes for the extra routing required in the arrival. Once airborne, the departures get a pretty straight shot at leaving the area, while the arrivals get vectored all over the place to make room for the departure streams. This difference offsets some of the very-long-taxi-out-at-big-airport effect.
For a true east-west run, like JFK-LAX & back, the actual air time can differ by 30-45 minutes due to the jetstream & general prevailing winds. The jetstream is a fairly small formation, and we’ll drive some distance out of our way to avoid it westbound, or to ride the edges of it eastbound. In general, it has rather little effect on scheduled times, but can affect actual times if its location du jour affects todays’ flights.
Regardless of the jetstream, the average winds at airliner altitudes are 20-40 mph west-to-east. More in the winter, less in the summer. We’re pretty well stuck with that no matter how we manuever.
And over the 4+hours from coast to coast, the cumulative effect is to add or subtract 20-ish minutes from the still-air time enroute. +0:20 one way and -0:20 the other gives us a 0:40-ish difference between going out & coming back.
Doesn’t the jet stream move around during different parts of the year? I know that I’ve scheduled this flight before and there wasn’t much difference in flight times. Is this just the time of year that the wind is blowing this way?
I scheduled this trip specifically so that I’d be flying out of New Orleans when a lot of tourists will be flying in (the week before Mardi Gras) and flying back on Fat Tuesday when everybody will be leaving. This has worked pretty well in the past for other people I know. The planes tend to be about 1/2 full.
My logic would be that there would be no wait on the taxiway, but then again, I guess all the planes bringing people in still have to fly back out again, full or empty.
Now, can anybody venture to guess what the weather will be like in New York City the third week of February? I’ll be staying with friends on Long Island but want to go down to the city for a day to sightsee. The weather forecasts seem to vary from temps in the 60s during the day all the way down to snow.
All the taxi delay is in JFK, not MSY. MSY is a ghost town all the time by comparison. It’ll still be a ghost town on the Mardi Gras peak travel days. The terminal might be packed with people, but there won’t be enough extra flights to congest the taxi & flight operations.
Between 6PM and about 8:30 PM is when all the jets leave JFK for Europe. This is true 7 days a week, 365 days a year. You’ll be sitting in a traffic jam of 767s, 777s, and 747s going over the pond, not 737s & MD80s & RJs going to Ohio & Florida & New Orleans.
As to weather, here is the relevant NWS office with lots of good stuff in the links: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/okx/index.php
Short version: Anything from 20F to 60F is reasonably possible and so is anything from a blizzard to clear, calm & shiny blue. This National Weather Service is the 7-day outlook. It’s normally pretty accurate. So look again when your trip is 7 days out & you’ll start to get a good idea.
Yes, the jet stream moves around seasonally. It tends to drop down during the winter so winds may vary from 70 knots to 150 knots. From my experience it doesn’t usually extend down to MSY but even if it did we’re talking about 10-15 minutes more on the flying time from JFK. Winter chaos on the ground will cause more problems.
