urbanSTL

^Assuming they do try to grow their way out of this mess, as the article implies, it will be interesting to see what they do. If they moved back in and attempted to use STL as a lower cost hub I can't imagine WN would just throw in the towel and go home, but I can also believe the new AA could give WN a much better fight for local O&D if they actually tried, and so far as I can tell they haven't really given up any of the facilities they would need to open that hub back up if they ever wanted to. I'd have to guess it would be almost trivially easy to move everyone not AA presently in C over to D and give AA all of C back if they wanted it. They still seem to have the ground ops, and I would think basing RJs here would be trivially easy if they wanted to. (And they already have the 737 maintenance.) Maybe they've really only mothballed the hub rather than truly disassembling it. Not that I can see any reason they would need it going forward, as they have plenty of capacity at DFW.

Meh, interesting to speculate. I'd more or less written AA off in my mind, but Covid changed a lot. Makes me almost regret that my mileage is all with DL now. (Almost.)

AA F/A base to “close” in February and become a satellite of the DFW mother base. What this basically means is a limited number of the 200 crew members based there can have their trip pairing sequences  coordinated to commence and terminate in STL. There will no longer be a dedicated reserve, and F/As who drop their trips need to find their own replacement. 

With ~20 daily peak day mainline departures pre-COVID the base really wasn’t an operational necessity. Now that the company is back in survival mode this is an easy opportunity to cut costs. The cost savings come from management & admin personnel and facilities. The Raleigh-Durham base is also closing and will become a satellite of Charlotte. The other satellites in AA’s system are MSP (ORD), ATL (MIA) and PIT (PHL).

I think Southwest will get back up over 100 flights a day this month. I have a couple with 99 in two weeks. Keep in mind this is at 66.6% of the passengers max though.

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Jun 28, 2020

This will just make you say what if... 

______________________________
Vasu Raja, Senior Vice President of planning at AA had an interview with Plane Business Banter. From the PlaneBusiness Banter interview with Vasu

PBB: Then there was all the debt. All the ill-will from the near-bankrupty in 2003. Concessions. 

Vasu: Right. It had so much debt and all this other stuff. And what it did was – all of this eroded everybody’s will. It eroded the will of the frontline team, of management, of investors, everybody.
I’ve always thought that if we could go back in time at AMR, the point I would go back to would be 2003. Whenever the airline got out of restructuring but after the time Carty left. 
If I could tell [CEO] Gerard [Arpey] anything – I’d tell him, "Grow the damn airline." 
Because, at that point in time, AMR had an advantage over all of these other guys – because they were all going to hurt their employees as they took them through bankruptcies and things like that. 
But the only way to do that was to NOT shrink. Grow at DFW. Don’t shut down St. Louis. 

PBB: St. Louis. That was so poorly handled. 

Vasu: Let me tell you something – St. Louis should have been and could have been the Charlotte of the Midwest for AMR. Hyper-peak St. Louis. When St. Louis was hot, that show was bigger than Chicago today for American Airlines. Think about that, right?
We should have gone the other way. When everyone else is shutting it all down, go. 

Full text:
https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/amer ... rview.html

Vasu actually visited STL last year, which I don't think is something he does often (visiting spoke cities to talk to the employees).  He said AA will be growing in STL, and expect more growth down the road. He said that we are positioned great geographically and are one of the few airports with free gates, runway capacity, etc.  A few months after he visited, indeed our flights increased to the highest we've had in years, and we had a number of existing flights that were upgauged to larger aircraft. The above comments just re-confirm this, that AA sees STL as a valuable market.  Regarding LAX, the comments by Vasu in the same article quoted above show that they appear to be disappointed with their recent expansion at LAX: "The thing we have going for us now – and I realize people don’t appreciate this – but take away New York, and L.A., and the rest of our hubs produce a 112% revenue premium to the industry. 112% revenue premium. And that number has grown over the last 2-3 years, primarily because of our growth at DFW."  Furthermore, in the recent release about their international network, AA is taking away most Asian flying from LAX and moving it to DFW or to SEA.  For July and August, AA only has 62-65 peak day flights out of LA, significantly below their normal levels of over 200 daily flights, so it's not surprising to see no flights to LA from STL.  I did a quick check in August and still see no flights to LA from Nashville, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Atlanta, Minneapolis, or Austin.  Meanwhile, AA just boosted their flights at STL from 14 to 22 on peak days.  While below the 40 flights we normally have out of there, it's certainly good to see the flights coming back.

^Interesting info, thanks for sharing. Delta also had been upgrading a lot of flights to mainline before the pandemic. Would be nice to see one of the two expand 
here. 

A little more info to go with your AA numbers

July Frequency update (based on week of July 13)

Flights per week (Flights per week June 2020) Flights per week July 2019
Southwest 680 (491) 813
AA 139 (90) 257
Delta 77 (27) 204
United 67 (21) 203
Allegiant  37 (30) 32
Alaska 14 (7) 21
Frontier 10 (8) 38
Sun Country 2 (2) 6

Total STL 1133 (790) 1792

Notes:

Southwest peaks at 99 flights a day. 
Allegiant actually running more flights than last year
Alaska IND leg is back
All stations are back for DL except Cincy, UA except SFO, AA except LAX, WN except Charleston/Hartford/New Orleans/San Antonio/SFO.

gone corporate wrote: ↑

Jul 09, 2020

^I firmly believe that the best thing that could happen to the STL business community would be increased flights at Lambert. 

Very much, the economic viability of this region's professional services industries - everything from attorneys to IT professionals to standard business administration to everyday salesmen - has been most impacted in the 21st Century by American de-hubbing Lambert Airport. The more flights Lambert gets, the better the region is to secure new business operations. After all, business executives need to fly, and they don't all want to fly Southwest. They want flights with Business Class options (that their bosses pay for), and they don't want to have to fly through 3 airports to get to their one destination. The less options the region has for flights, the less attractive we are to businesses locating and growing in the region. And, we need a Heathrow flight ASAP. 

If, and it's a big if... If we can get American to up their operations at Lambert, it would greatly help all of STL to grow economically. 

Also, it's absolutely makes sense why Neidorff is so attracted to Charlotte: it's a smaller STL with a hub airport. 

Absolutely.  While SW filling gaps has been great, business prefers one of the "big three".  Sure we can connect to Dallas or Chicago and go from there but that's certainly not ideal.  Our location, 360 degree operations and all-weather capability are still unique strong points which fit a hub profile.  If Delta feels Cincy, Det and Minny are workable mid-content hubs, why would American not see STL as a great addition in combo with Dal and Chi?  O'hare is lucrative, but a nightmare as a connecting hub due to delays (when ops are normal).    

It will be interesting to see what AA tries to do after COVID. Get the sense they may jump on STL-BOS to beat out Delta and JetBlue. Maybe some leisure routes to Florida since those would please local elites to use miles for leisure travel. One other possibility with this is if AA focues a bit more at STL, would this cause Alaska who is having more codeshares with AA restore/add flights to add more west coast flying and connectivity for transpacific networks?

Off topic but does anyone have the plans or details for the Illinois airport that was proposed in the 1970's as a replacement for Lambert? If my memory serves me correct, it was down in the floodplain near Columbia. Curious to see the runway alignment and terminal designs.

Someone was stabbed at the airport tonight..... Outside T1.

^ Thanks Chaifetz. For some reason I thought the proposal was down in the floodplain.

I think this is up on top of the bluff. 

August temperature check update. Southwest almost back to last years numbers in STL. Obviously actually cut by a 1/3 though.



Source:

Interesting to see Spirit swinging so hard and the legacy three all playing so much more conservatively. United's ongoing cuts look almost frightening.

Southwest adding nonstop service to Norfolk, VA July 26-August 10th. Will be interesting to see if it is extended.

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2020

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2020

Southwest adding nonstop service to Norfolk, VA July 26-August 10th. Will be interesting to see if it is extended.

Update: also adding Charlotte, Grand Rapids, and Providence.

This is great news.  Where was this listed?  I didn't see this on the SW site, nor Lambert.  As I look at the route maps, there were several cities I would like to see added and many of these were on it.  Now, If we could also get Cinci, Memphis and Louisville that would really fill in the Midwest nicely.

matguy70 wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2020

https://www.kmov.com/news/southwest-air ... f9c79.html

Thanks!

STLCityMike wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2020

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2020

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2020

Southwest adding nonstop service to Norfolk, VA July 26-August 10th. Will be interesting to see if it is extended.

Update: also adding Charlotte, Grand Rapids, and Providence.

This is great news.  Where was this listed?  I didn't see this on the SW site, nor Lambert.  As I look at the route maps, there were several cities I would like to see added and many of these were on it.  Now, If we could also get Cinci, Memphis and Louisville that would really fill in the Midwest nicely.

If Delta drops Cincy I wouldn't be surprised to see Southwest pick it up.

matguy70 wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2020

https://www.kmov.com/news/southwest-air ... f9c79.html

Any idea why these flights are scheduled for just two weeks?

robbie wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2020

matguy70 wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2020

https://www.kmov.com/news/southwest-air ... f9c79.html

Any idea why these flights are scheduled for just two weeks?

Via airport twitter:

Southwest had some available aircraft. They were looking at markets performing well during COVID and STL is one of those. Also a great opportunity to test these markets.
______________

My personal take. All of those except providence I figured were on the short list to start service. With covid going on Southwest seems to be service back more quickly at good connecting points. Since we are one is makes sense to flow more traffic thru here. They have been adding flights on short notice as needed so that is what this is. They could keep extending them as needed.