urbanSTL

British Airways just announced new service from Gatwick to Fort Lauderdale.

http://www.globenewswire.com/news-relea ... ondon.html

Sounds like Lambert is going to approach close to 14 million passengers this year. Expecting over 1 million more than last year.

http://www.flystl.com/Newsroom/Blog/tab ... arter.aspx

gregl wrote:British Airways just announced new service from Gatwick to Fort Lauderdale.

http://www.globenewswire.com/news-relea ... ondon.html

shadrach wrote:Who's next?

Des Moines?
Little Rock?

Last year the FLL moved more than twice as many passengers as STL - 26,941,671 to 12,752,331. It was also the fourth-fastest growing airport in the US in terms of traffic. Fort Lauderdale moved (an estimated) 5.5M international passengers last year; I haven't been able to find Lambert's international numbers but they're not close to that.

But for comparison, San Antonio only moved 8,507,459 passengers total in 2015.

jshank83 wrote:Sounds like Lambert is going to approach close to 14 million passengers this year. Expecting over 1 million more than last year.

http://www.flystl.com/Newsroom/Blog/tab ... arter.aspx

Per the Airport Counsel International last year Lambert was the 36th busiest airport in the North America, 24th in just the US. For some context (and yes I know this is comparing apples to oranges, bear with me): If you take that projected 14M number and insert it into last year's traffic rankings, STL would end up... the 36th busiest airport in the North America, 24th in just the US It would be a lot closer in volume to Love Field in Dallas, who moved 14,497,498 passengers in 2015. Still that's nice, steady growth, and encouraging to hear.

-RBB

I didn't realize we were that close to Love field in passengers. I'll take it

For anyone here interested, jetBlue recently called out that with the addition of Atlanta/ATL from Logan they now serve 24 of the 25 largest MSAs non-stop from the airport.

Starting in Boston, our growth strategy in Boston continues to pay off. As we've added new destinations and more flights, we've seen the overall Boston market strengthen. This gives us even more confidence as we now target growing to roughly 200 flights per day within the next several years from the current peak of 140 daily flights. As part of this growth, we will launch up to six daily flights to LaGuardia next week and plan to launch next March up to five daily flights to our 63rd nonstop destination from Boston, Atlanta. These are markets that our Boston business customers in particular have been asking us to fly for some time. By March of 2017, we plan on offering Boston business and leisure customers, nonstop service through 24 of the 25 largest metro areas within range of our current fleet.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/4014831 ... art=single

Not entirely sure which estimate or source they are using, but of course the notable exceptions are STL, MSP, and CVG.

I assume when people are mentioning San Antonio here they actually mean Austin when referring to BA? I know BA mentioned they can lump SA and Austin together for their flight since they are so close to each other. So, I am sure that helps their case since their numbers are over 20 mil a year combined.

rbb wrote:
Per the Airport Counsel International last year Lambert was the 36th busiest airport in the North America, 24th in just the US. For some context (and yes I know this is comparing apples to oranges, bear with me): If you take that projected 14M number and insert it into last year's traffic rankings, STL would end up... the 36th busiest airport in the North America, 24th in just the US It would be a lot closer in volume to Love Field in Dallas, who moved 14,497,498 passengers in 2015. Still that's nice, steady growth, and encouraging to hear.

-RBB

It looks to me like STL is 32 in the United States by this chart, not 24th. There were only 4 Canadian airports listed. Either way it is nice growth for the year.

dweebe wrote:

RuskiSTL wrote:Am I the only one not super jealous of New Orleans' situation? It seems to be an awfully high subsidy to bring in a few flights. I mean obviously from an ego perspective it's great. But I really hope St. Louis doesn't end up doing the same thing. I'd rather invest resources in higher cost/benefit options.

Are you talking overall or just investment in time and effort at the airport(s)?

I guess both. In this specific case New Orleans is not just subsidizing the studies/officials meetings in London/etc. Also probably a pretty big subsidy to have an entire office in London. It's being paid for by a hotel tax. St. Louis hotel market seems to be much more elastic than New Orleans. Also subsidies for BA marketing the flights, 1.4million annually. And the big elephant in the room, the "back stop" clause which seems to mean that even if the flights don't bring passengers, the city will pay BA to cover costs.

4 flights a week, 35 first class, 25 premium economy class, and 154 economy class seats. That's 11,128 available seats a year. So the first $126 that each arrival spends goes just to cover the marketing material, and that's if every single seat is filled. If the flights are 90% full that $126 bumps up to $140. Who knows how much the office in London costs or most importantly that back stop clause. For this to be at all financially successful for New Orleans I think you have to figure the tourists will spend on average $800+ in New Orleans, and even then it's not much over breaking even.

There are other benefits for sure. Most importantly is offering locals direct flights to London. I just compared price for flights in April, so far they are competitive on price. Only one other offering significantly cheaper but with 2 layovers. New Orleans and the region is largely very poor. If the direct flight becomes more than $100/150 more expensive than other 1 layover flights, I could see a lot of people in that region choosing an extra 3/5 hours of sitting at airports to save a few hundred bucks.

My original point I guess was to ask if all this money and effort might be better spent keeping hotel prices/taxes down. In STL that energy might be better focused to getting runway fees down? I'm not an expert on this industry at all. But after crunching the numbers just a little bit it seems like the subsidies are quite high. After the initial couple years will the finances make sense? Will the flights fill up after the honeymoon phase? Maybe. My personal opinion is that they won't. These kind of programs in St. Louis and New Orleans have pretty bad historical precedent.

RuskiSTL wrote:

dweebe wrote:

RuskiSTL wrote:Am I the only one not super jealous of New Orleans' situation? It seems to be an awfully high subsidy to bring in a few flights. I mean obviously from an ego perspective it's great. But I really hope St. Louis doesn't end up doing the same thing. I'd rather invest resources in higher cost/benefit options.

Are you talking overall or just investment in time and effort at the airport(s)?

I guess both. In this specific case New Orleans is not just subsidizing the studies/officials meetings in London/etc. Also probably a pretty big subsidy to have an entire office in London. It's being paid for by a hotel tax. St. Louis hotel market seems to be much more elastic than New Orleans. Also subsidies for BA marketing the flights, 1.4million annually. And the big elephant in the room, the "back stop" clause which seems to mean that even if the flights don't bring passengers, the city will pay BA to cover costs.

4 flights a week, 35 first class, 25 premium economy class, and 154 economy class seats. That's 11,128 available seats a year. So the first $126 that each arrival spends goes just to cover the marketing material, and that's if every single seat is filled. If the flights are 90% full that $126 bumps up to $140. Who knows how much the office in London costs or most importantly that back stop clause. For this to be at all financially successful for New Orleans I think you have to figure the tourists will spend on average $800+ in New Orleans, and even then it's not much over breaking even.

There are other benefits for sure. Most importantly is offering locals direct flights to London. I just compared price for flights in April, so far they are competitive on price. Only one other offering significantly cheaper but with 2 layovers. New Orleans and the region is largely very poor. If the direct flight becomes more than $100/150 more expensive than other 1 layover flights, I could see a lot of people in that region choosing an extra 3/5 hours of sitting at airports to save a few hundred bucks.

My original point I guess was to ask if all this money and effort might be better spent keeping hotel prices/taxes down. In STL that energy might be better focused to getting runway fees down? I'm not an expert on this industry at all. But after crunching the numbers just a little bit it seems like the subsidies are quite high. After the initial couple years will the finances make sense? Will the flights fill up after the honeymoon phase? Maybe. My personal opinion is that they won't. These kind of programs in St. Louis and New Orleans have pretty bad historical precedent.

I really tend to agree with this statement. Especially the point where you talk about how the New Orleans Metro is a very economically distressed area. I see people continuing to fly to DFW, IAH, ORD, ATL to fly to Europe. Then again, I feel this route very much is catering to the U.K., not necessarily people in Nola.


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Delta starting a flight to Orlando starting February.

Only Saturday though.

http://www.routesonline.com/news/38/air ... -feb-2017/

It is under $100 each way for the first few weekends after it starts.

matguy70 wrote:Strange flight - but nice to see another airline picking up MCO. Especially during the season. Right now you can fly 4 nonstop dailies on Southwest and from MidAmerica STL Allegiant nonstop to MCO.

Frontier also flies it once a day. It was not one I really saw coming but I like seeing Delta expand to a non hub, even if it's small. Hopefully, this leads to more locations.

Allegiant flies to Sanford not MCO, which I hear is a ways out of town (like midAmerica) but still serves Orlando. So I would still include it like you did.

matguy70 wrote:Strange flight - but nice to see another airline picking up MCO. Especially during the season. Right now you can fly 4 nonstop dailies on Southwest and from MidAmerica STL Allegiant nonstop to MCO.

Have to agree, seems odd. What I don't quite understand is that Delta put a lot into JFK gate expansion, doing same for LaGuardia and believe they are going to follow up with another big push at LAX but they don't to be interest in adding those lanes of service.

^I really thought JFK or possibly Boston would be the next Delta move here.

jshank83 wrote:^I really thought JFK or possibly Boston would be the next Delta move here.

Delta operates very few non-hub routes, other than weekend leisure flights like MCO.

The odds of DL adding BOS or LAX are very, very slim. JFK is likely the only route they would (re-)add from STL going forward.

Greg

I think it's very hopeful at the strong passenger growth the airport is putting out. Greg, what would the potential of a St Louis-Mexico City route on Southwest?

gregl wrote:

jshank83 wrote:^I really thought JFK or possibly Boston would be the next Delta move here.

Delta operates very few non-hub routes, other than weekend leisure flights like MCO.

The odds of DL adding BOS or LAX are very, very slim. JFK is likely the only route they would (re-)add from STL going forward.

Greg

The reasoning for my Boston thinking is although Southwest has 2 flights a day to Boston now, Delta seems to be expanding there. They just started a flight to Nashville (although they already have 3 flights day) and added a second daily flight to Milwaukee, as well as others. They also fly non stop from Boston to Indy and Columbus. So, since they fly to some midwest-ish cities I figured we might be able to support a smaller jet that has some business class seats. It may be a long shot, but I still figured that was more likely than a flight to a place where we have 5+ flights a day (on bigger planes) to already out of the area. Also, people could (although, I know they would probably rather direct them through DTW/ATL) connect in Boston to Europe.

I think in late February early March Southwest increases number to Boston to 3 a day. Normally they only did it during peak summer, but now starting earlier. Also have to consider at some point JetBlue starting it in the next couple years (may depend on available planes for it)

^ oh yes you are right. Nevermind then.

Chalupas54 wrote:I think it's very hopeful at the strong passenger growth the airport is putting out. Greg, what would the potential of a St Louis-Mexico City route on Southwest?

Very low. Mexico City is a very interesting destination. US-based airlines have difficulty serving MEX in a number of markets. For example, AA doesn't serve MEX from Chicago.

Southwest only serves MEX from Houston and Orange County -- with the Orange County service ending in January.

We are far more likely to see Southwest serve international leisure destinations like Cancun or Montego Bay than Mexico City.

gregl wrote:

imperialmog wrote:Also have to consider at some point JetBlue starting it in the next couple years (may depend on available planes for it)

At this point, I don't think STL is on the JetBlue radar.

I was surprised when we were not part of JetBlue's initial expansion shortly after they started flying as the (eastern) Midwest was an area they focused on (CLE, PIT, ORD, DTW, BNA).

Since then they have filled out their route map across the country but have a giant hole in the (western) Midwest -- a big circle defined by ORD, DEN, ABQ, DFW and BNA. They also don't fly to any cities north of a line between ORD, DEN, SLC & SEA.

Greg

Could this also be due to STL being a WN focus city? I read somewhere (escapes me where) that's why Spirit has no interest in serving STL.


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