Every couple of weeks I am going to do a post to see what the airlines have been up to on their U.S. domestic flight schedules. Who is dumping flights? What cities are getting new flights or worse having flights removed? What sort of planes are they changing out and all sorts of geek information. I picked today as a start for this type of post because of the the recent run up in fuel prices to see how the airlines are reacting:

First a bit about the methodology, it is pretty simple, I took the flight schedules as they existed for all filed commercial flights on October 29, 2007 and compared them with the flight schedules as they existed on November 19, 2007 - I chose a typical relatively well traveled Monday (March 10, 2008) as the travel departure date for comparison (I only pulled U.S. domestic flights — those with the country code “US”)

To start here are some overall statistics by airline on how many flights they have added/removed for travel departing on March 10, 2008 within the U.S (daily = typical Monday for this comparison):

• American Airlines - dropped 53 daily flights
• Alaska Airlines - added 2 daily flights
• JetBlue Airways - added 2 daily flights
• Continental Airlines - added 15 daily flights
• Delta Air Lines - dropped 31 daily flights
• Frontier Airlines - added 15 daily flights
• Northwest Airlines - dropped 91 daily flights
• United Airlines - dropped 76 daily flights
• US Airways - dropped 49 daily flights
• Virgin America - added 56 daily flights
• Southwest Airlines - added 34 daily flights
• Express Jet - added 200 daily flights

It was interesting to see Northwest, United and US Airways drop so many daily flights; they have been saber rattling about oil prices and possibly grounding some fleet, especially their gas guzzling planes — looks like a bit of activity in that direction may have started.

Normally I would say some of these changes could be seasonal, but this is a simple comparison of the same travel day 3 weeks apart, so it should be pretty indicative of what is going on.

Virgin America and Express Jet were by far the winners on new flights (for consumers more flights is a “winner”) as they both continue to expand their route systems.

The cities with the most lost flights were:

• Northwest Airlines dropped 30 daily flights departing from Minneapolis (MSP)
• Northwest Airlines dropped 14 daily flights departing from Detroit (DTW)
• US Airways dropped 13 daily flights departing from Las Vegas (LAS)
• US Airways dropped 12 daily flights departing from Pittsburgh (PIT)
• American Airlines dropped 11 daily flights departing from Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW)
• American Airlines dropped 11 daily flights departing from Las Vegas (LAS)
• United Airlines dropped 11 daily flights departing from Chicago (CHI)
• Delta Air Lines dropped 9 daily flights departing from Cincinnati (CVG)
• United Airlines dropped 9 daily flights departing from San Francisco (SFO)
• United Airlines dropped 8 daily flights departing from Denver (DEN)

The cities with the most added flights were:

• Express Jet added 24 daily flights departing from Ontario Airport in Los Angeles (ONT)
• Virgin America added 22 daily flights departing from San Francisco (SFO)
• Express Jet added 18 daily flights departing from San Diego (SAN)
• Express Jet added 14 daily flights departing from Sacramento (SMF)
• Frontier Airlines added 13 daily flights departing from Denver (DEN)
• Virgin America added 12 daily flights departing from Los Angeles (LAX)

• Southwest Airlines added 9 daily flights departing from San Francisco (SFO)

• US Airways added 9 daily flights departing from Philadelphia (PHL)

I also noticed some interesting activity related to the removal and addition of certain types of planes.

I am not an expert on fuel consumption of certain aircraft type (maybe someone can enlighten me), but these are the interesting things I noted:

• American Airlines dropped 46 daily regional jet flights (Embraer and Bombardier)
• Alaska Airlines dropped 5 prop daily flights and added 7 Bombardier regional jet daily flights
• JetBlue Airways added 2 Airbus narrow body jet daily flights
• Continental Airlines dropped 52 Boeing 737 daily flights and added 37 Boeing 757 and 28 regional jets (Embraer and Bombardier) daily flights
• Delta Air Lines dropped 30 regional jet (Embraer and Bombardier), 11 Boeing 757 and 8 Boeing MD-90 daily flights.
• Frontier Airlines and dropped 1 Airbus daily flight and added 16 regional jet daily flights
• Northwest Airlines dropped 158 Boeing DC9 and 44 Airbus daily flights, added 58 Boeing 757 and 50 regional jet daily flights (Embraer and Bombardier)
• United Airlines dropped 96 Airbus , 26 Boeing 737 , and 37 Bombardier regional jet daily flights, added 69 Boeing 757 and 20 Boeing 767 daily flights
• US Airways dropped 35 regional jet daily flights (Embraer and Bombardier) and added 12 Boeing 737 daily flights
• Virgin America added 56 Airbus daily flights
• Southwest added 34 Boeing 737 daily flights
• Express Jet added 200 Embraer Regional Jet daily flights

I’ll be posting some statistics on the magnitude of the changes shortly to provide some overall context.