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PostDec 08, 2017#4201

I went ahead and did January flight frequency numbers. I skipped December because the schedules change so much day to day with the holidays.

Most airlines are down flights from November (not surprising). January is pretty slow usually.

Southwest is down 30 flights a week from November from 707 a week to 677 a week. It goes to 791 next June so that is interesting to see how much it fluxes. This is somewhat influenced from Southwest being down planes. It will be interesting to see how it compares to next January.

Overall the airport is down 124 flights a week from November. That is influenced a lot by the Cape Air service losses (60 flights). As always plane sizes factor in to this also.

Notes:
Cape Air lost Quincy and Cape G service.
Alaska added San Diego and suspended Portland (temporarily).
Hautulco, Mexico charter service starts back up. Swift Air is taking over all charter service from Xtra in 2018.
Southwest ran/is running Orange County, CA and Panama City, FL over the holidays. Panama City will be back daily in March. Orange County I am putting as seasonal for now but I am not sure it returns since Southwest is losing more flights at Orange County. I'll wait to see if it is on the Thanksgiving schedule next year.

PostDec 08, 2017#4202

midcoaststl wrote: ↑
Nov 30, 2017
 Curious to know as well. I was on my second level at that time and it sounded like it was right outside and going to hit my house. I almost tweeted to see if anyone knew what it was. Pretty loud.
Did this happen to anyone else again this morning? I have planes go over my place pretty regularly but they aren't all that loud. I was woken up this morning around 5:40 to my house shaking from some kind of plane. It didn't show up on any fight trackers though, which means it must have been military related. Just curious if anyone else had it happen again to them.
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PostDec 08, 2017#4203

I think I saw that Delta flight yesterday—I was picking up my kids at GCAA and noticed an incoming plane that wasn't blue/yellow/red. :lol:

I'm not one those who would know a 737 from a 767 from an A321...
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PostDec 09, 2017#4204

jshank83 wrote: ↑
Dec 08, 2017
 Did this happen to anyone else again this morning? I have planes go over my place pretty regularly but they aren't all that loud. I was woken up this morning around 5:40 to my house shaking from some kind of plane. It didn't show up on any fight trackers though, which means it must have been military related. Just curious if anyone else had it happen again to them.
Yeah. It happens. I think I saw a VC-25 coming in the day before the St. Charles visit. (Looked to be a 747, but not on any tracker.) And I did hear something about that time the other morning. Assumed it was a cargo flight and didn't even look, as that's usually when the UPS/FedEx flights come in, I think. Some stupid early time when there's no light. (And they leave after dark most of the year. Maybe all. Of course.) But if it wasn't . . . maybe it was something military. Or a VIP flight. Quite a lot of private stuff doesn't show up. The Extra Airways 737 Clinton rented is still a do not track, even though she's not leasing it anymore. You probably just have to file a request and . . . voila.

But no, you're not the only one. There's more and more interesting stuff coming in and out of town lately. Could even be VIPs Boeing is flying in to show off their new toys. Probably not Canadian, but . . . maybe even them.

PostDec 09, 2017#4205

shadrach wrote: ↑
Dec 08, 2017
 I think I saw that Delta flight yesterday—I was picking up my kids at GCAA and noticed an incoming plane that wasn't blue/yellow/red. :lol:

I'm not one those who would know a 737 from a 767 from an A321...
Well, they all kind of look the same, save for the size. Two underwing engines. Low wing. Low tail. Things have gotten boring. Now even RJs are going that way. Heck, experienced fliers can't tell a 321 from a 737 without looking at the safety card. Don't feel so bad. In fact, revel in the fact you have a life. ;-)
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PostDec 09, 2017#4206

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑
Dec 09, 2017
 Heck, experienced fliers can't tell a 321 from a 737 without looking at the safety card.
Speak for yourself!
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PostDec 10, 2017#4207

gregl wrote: ↑
Dec 09, 2017
symphonicpoet wrote: ↑
Dec 09, 2017
 Heck, experienced fliers can't tell a 321 from a 737 without looking at the safety card.
Speak for yourself!
Aw, c'mon! I'm trying to be helpful here. Shadrach is a friend. And a smart guy. Just trying to give him some backup. ;-)

First off, I wouldn't call myself an exceptionally experienced flier. I've done a few laps around the rock, but not hundreds and hundreds of them. And it's true. It's a little hard to tell the difference. That doesn't mean nobody can, but you have to work at it a little. Study some. If you're not a railfan an SD-80 MAC looks pretty much the same as an AC4400CW. I can recite the spotting features. Maybe you can too. But it's a spotter thing, or an industry insider thing. Not necessarily an end user thing, even if the user is pretty experienced. Anyway . . .
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PostDec 10, 2017#4208

thanks SP for having my back!

This is probably in response to a comment I made while SP and I were knocking back a couple of Fourhands/Civilized (a couple of each will get you saying all sorts of things.)

I said of all the threads on this forum, the Lambert one is where it plummets pretty fast into the jargon rabbit hole—WN, BNA, EWR, BTS stats, O&D. Every time on this thread I find myself googling acronyms to figure out what half of you guys are on about.

(and don't get me wrong, I can spot the difference between a Sherman M4A1, M4A3, HVSS and the oh so obvious Firefly, so I'm prone to foaming...but crikey mates!)
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PostDec 10, 2017#4209

^^ A good point. The jargon often used in this thread can be very advanced. Is there a way to pin a post with like definitions and such for those who may not be as aviation literate?
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PostDec 11, 2017#4210

If only this forum had a feature that the old A.Net had where things like airport/airline names would automatically pop up by hovering your cursor over their codes/abbreviations...
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PostDec 11, 2017#4211

^Oh, that would be neat! On the other hand, it helps me hone my google foo. I suspect no one knows all of them. (Once you start getting into CPS grade airports and smaller, anyway. Though experienced pilots might even know at least most of those.)
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PostDec 11, 2017#4212

https://www.flystl.com/uploads/document ... p-2017.pdf

The airport updated their map.

Changes I noticed:

Air Canada to gate A17. (Which we already knew about)
Air Choice One now only has 1 gate instead of 2. (since they are walk out gates I am not sure how much that matters but they did lose 2 destinations this month).
Three Kings opens in June.

PostDec 17, 2017#4213

http://www.whig.com/20171215/shuttles-b ... gin-monday

A company in Quincy is going to start running a shuttle between Quincy and the airport here. This is because there is no longer a flight from Quincy to STL (it ended at the beginning of the month). I am going to be curious to see how it does. I wouldn't say I am optimistic but we will see. The price is similar to what the flight cost.

PostDec 17, 2017#4214

They have the website for Wingtips STL up now. It is lacking information for access though. I am guessing it will be similar to the JFK location.

http://wingtipslounge.com/STL/
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PostDec 20, 2017#4215

I'm seeing some incredible fares on SW Airlines to Fort Lauderdale around spring training times. Feb 27th, $27 one way nonstop is still out there. And they had returns in March for the same price, (but they may be gone by now). I signed up for 2 round trip tickets for my wife and I for a grand total of $107 for both of us. I couldn't resist. Even if we find we can't go later, SW let's you apply the funds to a future flight within a year with no penalty.
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PostDec 20, 2017#4216

gary kreie wrote: ↑
Dec 20, 2017
 I'm seeing some incredible fares on SW Airlines to Fort Lauderdale around spring training times. Feb 27th, $27 one way nonstop is still out there. And they had returns in March for the same price, (but they may be gone by now). I signed up for 2 round trip tickets for my wife and I for a grand total of $107 for both of us. I couldn't resist. Even if we find we can't go later, SW let's you apply the funds to a future flight within a year with no penalty.
Probably not a good sign if prices are that low...
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PostDec 21, 2017#4217

tygss wrote: ↑
Dec 20, 2017
Probably not a good sign if prices are that low...
Not a good sign of what? SWA scales back their fares frequently throughout the year even outside of their sale periods. This means nothing.
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PostDec 21, 2017#4218

Chalupas54 wrote: ↑
Dec 21, 2017
tygss wrote: ↑
Dec 20, 2017
Probably not a good sign if prices are that low...
Not a good sign of what? SWA scales back their fares frequently throughout the year even outside of their sale periods. This means nothing.
$27 dollars is G4, F9, NK type fares, not WN. The lowest I have seen on WN is $59 dollars one-way.
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PostDec 21, 2017#4219

Chalupas54 wrote:
tygss wrote: ↑
Dec 20, 2017
Probably not a good sign if prices are that low...
Not a good sign of what? SWA scales back their fares frequently throughout the year even outside of their sale periods. This means nothing.
I agree. Demand will pick up considerably for March tickets to Jupiter after Feb 1. I never quite understood why SW nonstop tickets are cheaper than connections, but I’m glad they are.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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PostDec 21, 2017#4220

Chalupas54 wrote: ↑
Dec 21, 2017
tygss wrote: ↑
Dec 20, 2017
Probably not a good sign if prices are that low...
Not a good sign of what? SWA scales back their fares frequently throughout the year even outside of their sale periods. This means nothing.
Yeah they are somewhat price matching with AA.

I got $33 tickets to PHX for spring training this past week on Southwest. AA had them at the same price (for basic economy). AA has been running low fares to MIA as well. Most of the cheap fares are for Tues/Wed/Saturday. After I bought one of my tickets for $33 (it said last one at this price) it shot up to $164 per ticket so the cheap ones are limited.

I don't think is has anything to do with how well the routes are doing they just are running some specials and other price match. Southwest will price match Frontier sometimes too. Southwest and United had tickets to Denver for $39 a couple weeks ago.

PostDec 21, 2017#4221

I started working on my load factor spreadsheet again today for 2017. I also plan on doing a bunch while I have a flight to the west coast this weekend to pass the time.

I am doing each station pair from/to STL by month and then feeding it into a spreadsheet for each airlines entire operation (Look at the tabs on the bottom). Anyway, so far I have just have been working on WN. I started on routes I was interested and am now just going alphabetically. I am going to keep doing it this way unless someone has a certain route/airline they are interested in, then I will go do requests first.

Anyways, here is the link. It will be updated more tonight as I go then should get a bigger update on Saturday night after I get off my flight.



Feel free to ask for a route you want to know about first.

PostDec 22, 2017#4222

Decatur air service is switching from Air Choice one to Cape Air on February 1. Service to STL will be the same except 1 less Sunday flight. They also are flying to Chicago from Decatur. The airport board had recommended they switch to Chicago only service by Skywest but DOT picked Cape Air instead, because of cost.

http://herald-review.com/news/local/gov ... b6572.html

PostDec 28, 2017#4223

I finally got thru the current year to date load factor numbers for Southwest, Alaska, and Air Canada. I also started on United. I will continue going thru them but I wanted to put up an update on Southwest since it is the biggest. The link has it for the overall year then there are tabs for each city that breaks it down by month.

5 Highest Total Load Factor % routes on Southwest. (Orange County would have made this list but it wasn't run much due to WN slot cuts.)

Milwaukee WI (MKE) 90.37%
San Diego CA (SAN) 90.14%
Orlando FL (MCO) 88.40%
Denver CO (DEN) 86.60%
San Francisco CA (SFO) 86.26%

5 Lowest Total Load Factor % routes on Southwest.

Minneapolis MN (MSP) 67.33%
Tulsa OK (TUL) 69.82%
Detroit MI (DTW) 70.65%
Chicago IL (MDW) 71.95%
Kansas City MO (MCI) 72.02%

Thoughts: I was really surprised MKE was so high, but now I guess we know why a frequency was added. Same with SAN going from seasonal to 2x daily so quickly. MSP and DTW kind of shocked me being in the lowest 5. They don't even have any months above 80%. So it surprises me MSP goes to 3x. PIT is the 8th highest. I still think that that will go to 2x daily sometime soon. Obviously, there are more factors than just this on where flights get added but I thought it was interested to see how it shook out. I also have a PDEW spreadsheet to compare this with.

Link for Load Factors:



Link for PDEW:



Link for flight frequency from STL by airline and city pairs:

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PostDec 28, 2017#4224

Per their Facebook page, India Palace's last day open at the airport location is Sunday, Dec 31.
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PostDec 29, 2017#4225

jshank83 wrote: ↑
Dec 28, 2017
5 Lowest Total Load Factor % routes on Southwest.

Minneapolis MN (MSP) 67.33%
Tulsa OK (TUL) 69.82%
Detroit MI (DTW) 70.65%
Chicago IL (MDW) 71.95%
Kansas City MO (MCI) 72.02%

Thoughts: I was really surprised MKE was so high, but now I guess we know why a frequency was added. Same with SAN going from seasonal to 2x daily so quickly. MSP and DTW kind of shocked me being in the lowest 5. They don't even have any months above 80%. So it surprises me MSP goes to 3x.
Southwest to me seems that are trying to pull some traffic out Delta's respective hubs up north and route it through STL instead of Midway. I have Delta SFO to Detroit flight on Tuesday and my recent experience is that almost all the SFO Delta hub flights, except red eyes, coming and going from the West Coast are full whether it be Atlanta (even more so), MSP, or Detroit. Sure Delta takes advantage of it in pricing. The best two cents I can offer is maybe they see an opportunity if Delta is cautious on upping frequency, capacity from northern plains/upper midwest going west.

The plus side for me in recent years when using my Delta miles into St. Louis is that my upgrades come easier via MSP. Delta flights not exactly full either the last couple of times I have flown into STL. I also have much easier time and use less frequent flyer miles to get my step daughter out west if she routes through MSP and or back tracks to Detroit & then west..
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