Schedules are the backbone of airline operations. They are preplanned routes allowing for more organized and efficient use of airport and fleet in airline's network.
Schedules benefits over Free Flights:
Some. Schedules come at a cost. Each route requires daily operational fee which applies only on the days that schedule is available, so route planned for Sunday will only cost your airline once a week.
Price of a scheduled route is determined using great circle distance between the airports and is roughly 25$ for every 200 nautical miles.
Daily fee is applied only if schedule is active on given week day and is not affected by how many flights were performed using this route on given day.