urbanSTL

dweebe wrote:

matguy70 wrote:Detroit and STL's airports were both on Par together for years with Northwest hub in Detroit and TWA in St. Louis. Detroit remained strong (so far) with Delta's takeover. I still can see Delta hubing down Detroit or MSP in the next few years. One or the other... and most likely MSP before Detroit due to larger population and service area.

One of those two is going to take a hit, hard. I like your MSP guess.

Doubtful. Minneapolis is a VITAL connecting airport for the upper Midwest. I currently live in Sioux Falls, SD, and the FSD-MSP route is extremely busy- sometimes a departure every two hours, which for an airport serving 145,000, is a big deal. These also are usually mainline flights. But it's not just Sioux Falls. Cities like Fargo, Aberdeen (SD), Des Moines, Omaha, Rapid City, Bismarck, Duluth, and Billings rely on frequent service out of Minneapolis. It's extremely vital to the economics of the region. Also, the Twin Cities can support a large hub. There is a VERY large demand in the area for Int'l travel and domestic travel. MSP also has some of the largest repair and maintenance bases at MSP. The next closest hub to the region would be Denver, but has much less frequency on United, which I believe serves only Sioux Falls, Fargo, DSM and OMA mainline. Even if DAL wound down one of the airports, it would be DTW, but even then that's doubtful. CVG has practically been dehubbed, but if DAL was to wind down further, it would be Salt Lake City, IMHO.

EDIT: Forgot to mention ORD, but that also is only big with American and United. Most individuals up here flew on Northwest, and are used to flying Delta, so O'Hare is nowhere close to the MSP travel numbers. ORD also has two flights from FSD, MSP I believe has 10.

Delta is slowly dismantling their Tokyo Narita (NRT) hub. They built that trans-Pacific hub in Seattle and the need for Narita is not needed anymore. This is especially more so with the opening of day time flights to the US from the other Tokyo airport, Haneda. End of October Delta will not be flying to Bangkok, , Los Angeles, New York-JFK, and Osaka from NRT, but I think eventually their other flights like to Taipei will be eventually be cut and code-shared with Skyteam partner China Airlines.

It is sad to see all this downsizing and dehubbing. I miss Northwest, as that was one of my favorite US airlines. I never understood why mergers are good. Its not good for competition and gives airlines more ways to manipulate fares and routes. All it benefits are the shareholders as other things get cut, either quickly or gradually...

I do not want to see the merger with Alaska and Virgin America go through.

Just throwing this out there, which IMO could strengthen the prospects of new international service for STL:

Southwest Airlines is seriously contemplating the virtues of potentially historic codesharing and interlining agreements that could allow the carrier to expand its passenger base without significant investment in new planes, the addition of large numbers of new employees, or the opening of new routes.

In an internal memo from Southwest's Senior Vice President of Network and Revenue Andrew Watterson obtained by the Chicago Business Journal, Watterson tried to explain why such booking partnerships, particularly with other international carriers, would generate more revenue for Southwest.

<snip>

Watterson went on to explain in his memo the subtle differences between codeshare and interline agreements in the airline business. An interline agreement allows a carrier to sell tickets on flights operated by another airline on a single reservation. Codesharing goes a step further, allowing one airline to sell seats on another carrier's flight using its own airline designator code and flight number.

http://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/news ... yptr=yahoo

Southwest previously codeshared/interlined or planned to collaborate with Icelandair, Volaris, and Westjet, along with the former American Trans Air (ATA) with poor success.

For those that may not be aware, Southwest is also in the process of transitioning to Amadeus for their distribution and passenger service. jetBlue transitioned onto Sabre in Q1 2010 and then got on a roll landing new interline & codeshare partnerships (including AA, at the time).

It is also worth pointing out that when WN launched their initial international service, it was a surprise to many in the industry that a good number of their employees didn't even have U.S. Passports-which previously were not required to apply for F/A or cockpit role at WN.

In the near term, I would say it's more likely to see WN take on F9 and their charter CUN milk runs out of STL. WN would be catering to a different type of passenger though, but could command higher yields than F9 is getting in that market.

JAL007 wrote:

matguy70 wrote:TW did STL in a big way around the same time more or less through the Ozark acquisition.

TWA was a big player in STL even before buying Ozark. Just prior to the merger, TWA had 230 daily flights out of STL while Ozark had just under 200. The merger did make STL a fortress hub with over 400 daily flights.

Although not related to KSTL, I was just wondering, is St Louis in any competition with Kansas City for flights?

I read somewhere that because of the KC setup (small waiting areas/etc) that Southwest doesn't plan on expanding much more there and that is one reason STL is getting more flights than KC. This is one reason KC is looking at remodeling their airport also.

Chalupas54 wrote:Although not related to KSTL, I was just wondering, is St Louis in any competition with Kansas City for flights?

Not really. We are not close enough that adding a domestic flight would be one airport vs. the other. It's theoretically possible there is a slight competition for international service... but consider that BA added Austin when it is less than 200 miles from the AA / OneWorld mega-hub at DFW.

Greg

jshank83 wrote:KC is looking at remodeling their airport also.

Truly a shame that the new KCI terminal is stalled. It's a really, really, really awful airport.

You don't have to read the whole story, but the very end is a call from a business leader for more mainland direct flights and international flights at STL. Definitely agree!

http://www.stltoday.com/business/column ... 59df3.html

Found this article about rust belt cities airports and trying to regain ground after losing hub status. I thought it was interesting even though most of us on here already know the things mentioned. The quote below I thought stood out a little that they both agree a problem exists with southwest expansion. I figured short term the expanding into D wouldn't be a problem, but I guess Southwest (and probably Lambert) wants a long term solution. I will be interested to see how that shakes out and how much it hinders them adding new and to existing routes.

http://airlinegeeks.com/2016/08/18/aban ... art-three/

"St. Louis is now a focus city for Southwest, and while that is great for both parties involved, there is projected to be some growing pains in the near future. Southwest is quickly outgrowing their terminal, and with Southwest continuing to add new routes out of Lambert, the need for a solution grows more each time a route is introduced. The easiest solution would be to renovate and reopen Concourse D of the main terminal for Southwest since the West Terminal and East Terminal are connected by Concourse D. Both parties have yet to comment on a possible solution, but agree that the problem exists. Lambert is also interested in restarting European service, with both Lufthansa and British Airways mentioning St. Louis as a possible destination for future flights."

jshank83 wrote:I mentioned this before that I wish Delta flew from here to Boston. They are adding Nashville and some others (extra flight to Milwaukee). So that annoys me.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/money/bus ... /88759510/

DL has tried just about everything under the sun from Logan and many have failed. In the past five years or so they've left DCA [Shuttle], LAS, MCI, NAS, PHL, YYZ and pared back Florida flying significantly to seasonal. I wouldn't get too worked up about it, this is more an attack on WN (also B6 for BNA).

Selfishly I'd like to have the option, but it would likely be on a CRJ-900 which I wouldn't want to stomach for a three hour flight. There are several well timed connections (35 minutes) over CVG which are a breeze the staff there is always first rate, despite all the cutbacks they've endured.

The MCI run was a sales play for State Street as I understand it.

Hadn't seen it. It was an interesting read. Thank you. Back in the day it almost made sense. The Illinois side was growing faster then, as I recall, and Lambert was a zoo in the 90s. (A fun zoo, mind. I always enjoyed being there and hustling out the walkways in C or D.) Probably served it's purpose by saving the base. But . . . yeah, it's become a very strange ghost. I've driven past a few times and it feels like a mirage in a cornfield. It's particularly surreal when you pass it at three o'clock of a morning. If you should ever bother to ride Metrolink the full distance it's quite interesting. One of these days I'll find a good excuse to fly out of BLV . . . especially as they still have MD-80s. Wouldn't want Airbus to accidentally take the number two slot on my hours or miles. (Not that it's too much of a threat now that I'm taking four hour flights on "regionals" from time to time.)

I believe the writer it is slightly off base on two points:

(1) MetroLink eastern terminus is at Scott AFB, several miles from the passenger terminal and certainly isn't walkable

(2) The only FIS (federal inspection service) facility is for air freight not passengers.

Overall it was a nice read and glad this relatively younger student is developing an interest in aviation.

I have wanted to just walk into that airport sometime and check it out. My aunt flies up from Orlando on allegiant sometimes and says it is pretty easy to use. Now that they have a couple direct destinations Lambert doesn't (JAX and Fort Walton), maybe I will find a reason to use it. Safety issues have been keeping me away though. You can find tons of Allegiant articles on safety concerns.

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/ ... 696d2.html

I wonder how this could affect things here next year? Especially with any potential fleet issues that were mentioned. Also I did see an article recently on the tech upgrades that one thing they will be able to do that everyone else does is be able to vary schedules and frequency more based on day of the week. Since they have so far only had a regular schedule and a Saturday one. This could potentially change service levels here by changing frequency by day of week and maybe allow new service to start since it doesn't have to be daily.

imperialmog wrote: Also I did see an article recently on the tech upgrades that one thing they will be able to do that everyone else does is be able to vary schedules and frequency more based on day of the week. Since they have so far only had a regular schedule and a Saturday one. This could potentially change service levels here by changing frequency by day of week and maybe allow new service to start since it doesn't have to be daily.

When Southwest implements day by day frequency, I would be quite surprised if they add any less than daily routes. That type of scheduling will more likely be used to operate extra flights on peak days of the week -- perhaps something like 2x daily to Austin on M & F, with 1x daily the remaining days of the week.

Greg

Quick observation. Just flew home to STL this morning from CMH on SW. Arrived at 9 AM to see a *very* full and active Terminal 2, with all gates being used, long lines for food, etc. It was very, very pleasant to see this and reminded me of the proverbial "good old days."

Jeff

I flew out (on air canada) Thursday about 9:45 am and also noticed how almost every gate was full in T2 as we taxied by. It was nice to see.