Does it matter when my flights leave?

Yes, once a route has more than one departure a day. Passengers want to leave at different times, and a timetable with every flight in the same morning does not serve the ones who wanted the evening — so a route keeps only part of its local market when its departures are bunched.

• Evenly spread keeps everything. Two flights morning and evening, or four through the day, lose nothing.
• Bunched loses some — two flights an hour apart on a short route keep roughly three-quarters — but never less than 65%.
• One flight a day is never penalised, whenever it leaves.
• Long journeys care less. People plan a long-haul trip around the flight; a one-hour hop has to leave when it suits.

The route card shows how much a bunched timetable is costing. To fix it, stagger the day starts of the aircraft on the route (Fleet tab), or tick Alternate routes on an aircraft that works several. Connecting passengers are not affected by this — their timing is scored separately at the hub.