The Cranky Weekly Review is taking a break this week since we’ve been so busy with the awards that we’ve barely had time to keep up on the news. It’ll be back as normal next Friday.
Thank you to everyone who joined in last night and watched the Cranky Network Awards presented by Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport live! I’m just going to assume it went great, the audio was perfect, and you loved absolutely every joke. I have no choice but to assume that, because I wrote this post before the event, and there’s no way I’m going to be functioning enough to change this before it goes live… if it didn’t go quite as planned.
If for some reason you missed it — and I have no idea what terrible excuse you may have made up to justify that transgression — you can always watch it right here. But for those who hate jokes and fun and just want the details, well, here are the winners…
- American for Miami to Tortola/Beef Island (Sexiest New Route – Short-Haul)
- Hawaiian for Honolulu to Raratonga (Sexiest New Route – Long-Haul)
- Sun Country for Refocusing on MSP (Calculated Risk Award presented by Embraer)
- Qantas for Dallas/Fort Worth – Melbourne (Kingsford Smith Southern Cross Award presented by Oakland International Airport)
- Breeze for Los Angeles – Westchester County (Best Aircraft-Enabled Opportunity)
- Frontier for Getting JetBlue and Spirit Together (Matchmaker Award)
- United with Emirates (Most Promising New Partnership presented by Pittsburgh International Airport)
- Anthony Gilmer at Louisville Regional Airport Authority (Best Airport Partner)
- United for UA 769 for the last 3 digits in the 2nd row of the Sagrada Familia’s Magic Square (Most Clever Flight Number)
- Delta (Regional Apocalypse Survivor Award presented by Landline)
- Spirit for Los Angeles – Newark (Route Victory Award)
- Alaska for Seattle – Midcontinent Flying (Network Victory Award presented by Boeing)
- Frontier for Growth into Larger Markets (Most Improved Network presented by Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport)
We also handed out eight technical awards with Cirium using their data to identify some pretty cool metrics, if I do say so myself.
- Frequency Growth Chamption: JetBlue for biggest growth in domestic frequency per market at +34.6 percent
- New Load Factor Champion: Allegiant for Akron-Canton to Sarasota at 93.1 percent
- New Traffic Champion: United Newark – San Francisco + 370,878 passengers in 2022 vs 2021
- Gate Utilization Champion: American at Austin Gate 23 with 10.9 turns per day
- Aircraft Air Time Champion: Delta A350 N515DN with 14.76 hours per day
- Aircraft Air Time Champion (Regional): American/Envoy Embraer 175 N260NN with 7.94 hours per day
- Aircraft Cycle Champion (Mainland): Southwest 737-700 N940WN with 5.86 cycles per day
- Aircraft Cycle Champion: Southern/Mokulele N2150 with 8.6 cycles per day
If you’d like to hear the backstories on these, you’ll need to watch the event where we trot out numbers and explain in greater detail. Dave and I will also be putting a podcast out where we talk more about the winners.
Thanks to everyone for watching. And now, you can mark your calendars for February 22, 2024 when we will come to you live from Berkeley, California thanks to next year’s presenting sponsor, Oakland International Airport!
9 comments on “A Look at Cranky Network Award Winners and Announcing Next Year’s Event”
Didn’t get a chance to watch the awards live (I live on the East Coast, and work early hours, so the live event was past my bedtime), but will try to catch the recording this weekend, should be fun.
I really like the Cirium technical awards, as they are very fun metrics to look at and to consider the implications of… For example, when that single gate is averaging 11 turns a day for AA at Austin, I can only imagine how busy the gate agents must be, not to mention the workers at any nearby newsstands/coffeeshops.
That 11 turn gate is beyond impressive. Don’t forget the ground crew! They must be doing an amazing job as well. Assuming there is no departures between 12 and 5AM, we are still talking about a non-stop 11 turns in 19 hours every day!!! Averaging just iver 100 minutes per turn. Conspiracy theory is the only way to explain this. Mysterical power also forbids any aircraft to have mechanical or weather related delay at that gate.
I’d be curious to know the rawish data. What what was the busiest day? What was the slowest day. Time of first departure and last departure. How does all that work out?
Nick – Unfortunately I don’t have those details, but I can see if Cirium can get it. They pulled this info and showed us the sum totals but not the underlying detail.
The “Stories Behind the Technical Awards” might be a fun theme for a few posts or podcast interviews. I know many of us would be interested, both in the data and in the stories behind the data.
“America’s Busiest GAAte: How AUS’ Gate A23 Averages 10.9 Turns a Day,” for example, seems like a headline made to order for an AA employee newsletter article or PR team press release, and it would be interesting to hear from the local AA managers etc about the challenges involved in averaging that many turns.
Great point. The people below the wing must have NEVER stopped moving at that pace, especially considering that for a 10.9 turn average, some days likely ran a few turns more.
The show went much more smoothly than last year. Congratulations. Looking forward to next year’s live stream.
Interesting that the sponsor of the Calculated Risk award is the company that chose to make new versions of their popular regional jets noncompliant with the scope clauses of the Big 3 airlines.
DFW-MEL is a story about the 787-9’s legs – 17 plus hours in the air on a regular basis. northbound is still 15+
DL pushes its A350s hard. N515DN, according to flightaware, has been doing ATL-S. Africa for a week. 14+ hours southbound to CPT and 15+ to JNB and up to 17 hours northbound – which is very impressive considering the high altitude of JNB. just 2 daylight sits in ATL and one 36 hour sit in the past week. According to Airbus’ production list, 515 is not even the highest takeoff weight version of the A350; 518 and 519 are but Delta has 13 more coming in 2024 and 25 that will be.
Boeing is certain to start delivering the B787-9 with increased capabilities in the next few years to the pleasure of AA and UA and more.
Both are incredible machines.
You will have many more flights on the “can you believe it” list in the years to come.