This was my first thought. Even with flight attendants and maintenance. I wouldn't have guessed they could cut 1,100 and still have anyone left.BellaVilla wrote: ↑Feb 09, 2021I'm surprised AA still had that many employees in StL.
My friends who dead head are counted out of their base.symphonicpoet wrote:^Pure speculation, but maybe it has something to do with Trans States and GoJet. Pilots and cabin crew on regionals often work to move up to the majors, and anyone who's come up through a regional recently would be at the bottom of the seniority list and thus the first to get furloughed. And we have pretty frequent and remarkably short flights to Chicago, so a Chicago based crew could live in St. Louis pretty easily, really. Are all 1,100 folks AA is cutting actually employed out of the St. Louis base, or do they just live here? The two numbers could be very different. (I briefly lived next to a fellow who flew for TransStates out of St. Louis, but lived in Columbia. He would deadhead into St. Louis a couple of times a week as I recall. And I expect with the majors that sort of thing is more common. Though maybe Southwest is the one oddball that doesn't do that. They're odd about everything else, so why not that?)
It would be work here. Where they live doesn’t matter.symphonicpoet wrote: ↑Feb 09, 2021^Pure speculation, but maybe it has something to do with Trans States and GoJet. Pilots and cabin crew on regionals often work to move up to the majors, and anyone who's come up through a regional recently would be at the bottom of the seniority list and thus the first to get furloughed. And we have pretty frequent and remarkably short flights to Chicago, so a Chicago based crew could live in St. Louis pretty easily, really. Are all 1,100 folks AA is cutting actually employed out of the St. Louis base, or do they just live here? The two numbers could be very different. (I briefly lived next to a fellow who flew for TransStates out of St. Louis, but lived in Columbia. He would deadhead into St. Louis a couple of times a week as I recall. And I expect with the majors that sort of thing is more common. Though maybe Southwest is the one oddball that doesn't do that. They're odd about everything else, so why not that?)
Burkart said St. Louis is unlikely to land large headquarters projects without first luring an airline hub back to town. American Airlines "de-hubbed" St. Louis Lambert International Airport earlier this century after it acquired Trans World Airlines.
"It's really difficult for the city to attract a headquarters, it has to be accessible with nonstop flights," Burkart said. "More headquarters are going to hub cities. Without a hub, it's very difficult to support headquarters back-office operations."
Isn’t Nashville at 20 million + a year? Maybe they aren’t a hub but they are quickly attaining hub levels of traffic.sc4mayor wrote:I certainly agree that a hub would go a long way...but Nashville seems to do be doing well and they're nothing more than a focus city for Allegiant...
Are there really that many hubs to go around anymore, even more so after Covid? Especially for the Midwest?
I think aiming for more service to more destinations with the legacy carriers, maybe a few international routes and continuing to fill out the Southwest service would be a good course of action for STL...I'm just not seeing a full blown hub here again anytime soon.
Meanwhile, passenger volume at the airport grew from 12.4 million in 2014 to 15.8 million passengers in 2019 — the highest number since 2002, according to the report. The number is expected to grow by 3% each year through 2031.
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/met ... 13ec2.html
It didn't last long due to Covid, but United's CRJ-550 was a huge improvement for UA flyers in this respect.jshank83 wrote: ↑Feb 24, 2021As others mentioned. STL isn’t going to be a hub anytime soon. That said they need to get more routes on airlines that have a true business class. That is always what businesses complain about. We have a way better route map with nonstop routes than other cities (PIT, Kansas City, Indy, Cleveland, etc) with Southwest factored in so I am sure that helps us over some of those.
Most of this I agree with except " however STL is still outpacing BNA with Southwest". Over the last couple years it has grown faster at BNA and has passed STL. Thru COVID they also are keeping quite a bit more flights at BNA than they are here. BNA has also picked up many more new stations than us in the last year. We still have more total but they passed us in flights and closed the gap on destinations. It was more like a 10-15 station gap a couple years ago.matguy70 wrote: ↑Feb 24, 2021Some points:
1) First of all for a Consulting Firm out of another city (especially that of Detroit/hub) to comment that STL needs to attract a hub - he is completely CLUELESS of the airline industry in the USA at this time (and for the future) and makes me just roll eyes and wonder *why* a so-called consultant wouldn't KNOW the industry before smacking off a statement that is utterly ignorant.
The current hub status of the last four legacy airlines in the USA (especially the traditional hub/spoke American/United and Delta) are locked up and they are NOT going to be opening any new hubs - only expanding/cutting the ones they have now. They are strategically located for them and over the last 20 years (after 9/11) those airlines positioned themselves to make money at those hubs while cutting redundant ones [as noted in posts above]. Secondly, the air industry will increase with post-covid world, but it will take some time and airlines will wait to increase frequency everywhere in those solid hub cities.
The Other Legacy Airline - Southwest and growth at STL
Then there is the other legacy Southwest (which is considered legacy now) and they have more of a point to point system - however, changing into more of a Hub system too. And yes, Southwest does consider St. Louis as one of their connection hubs today. They have continued to build on their STL Hub over the past 20 years and more so after American pulled flights. Southwest has been good to STL and more connections are flowing through STL than even BNA (Nashville). They have been increasing their frequency and destinations in both markets - however STL is still outpacing BNA with Southwest. Prior to Covid, Southwest was planning even more expansion in STL on frequency and destinations, but had to pull back here as well as all markets. In September of last year (2020) in the middle of the Covid crisis - Gary Kelly SWA CEO said... (when speaking on terms of adding new airports/destinations and increasing service to them) "Now, if things get back to normal, those kinds of opportunities will have a hard time competing for our need to invest in St. Louis or Nashville or Austin. It just creates a really unique opportunity to expand the route map. I know it will be successful."" [see below]
Southwest STL and BNA Hubs:
STL: 56 Nonstop Destinations (includes yearly Cancun and Seasonal Punta Cana) 18 Gates total
BNA: 52 Nonstop Destinations (includes seasonal Cancun) 16 Gates (16 gates now total *just added 6 more after construction ended during Covid)
Two articles to read:
Southwest and Their "HUBS":
https://thepointsguy.com/news/does-sout ... have-hubs/
Gary Kelly SWA CEO Q&A Article during the pandemic:
https://thepointsguy.com/news/southwest ... lly-qanda/
Gary Kelly has said many times that STL and BNA (just opened new Southwest concourse) growth is DUE TO that fact that Southwest literally has their own Terminals/Concourses in these cities. STL can continue to grow into the "D" gates and Nashville has just opened an addition concourse with 6 new gates there (ironically in D Concourse).
One advantage to their total numbers at BNA is that Allegiant is flying through the airport there as well... no loss of love for allegiant - but we split our airports total passenger numbers with MidAmerica-St. Louis when it comes to the low-cost Allegiant. Allegiant has built up over time in STL at BLV but I really feel they could have built up at Lambert further if we didn't have the two airport option.
When STL was TWA's Hub
I think it is interesting to note that when TWA was at their highest level of flying through their STL mega-hub, the airline served approximately 75 Nonstop Mainline destinations and 2 EU Mainline International Destinations - and their feeder had 24 additional small markets (like Madison/Council Bluffs/Lincoln/Branson etc) on TWexpress small planes.
TWA 2001 STL
Today STL International is serving 76 Nonstop Mainline destinations. (most all of the small market TWE destinations are gone in addition to Paris and London EU destinations). That being said, when comparing destinations for STL travelers - most can get where they need to go on one flight in the continental USA, Toronto, and Caribbean Destinations.
Final Thought(s)
STL International is growing and the growth was huge in the past 5 years for sure - and without the pandemic hitting, we would have had even more destinations and frequencies added in the past 12 months with Southwest (and possibly others). I know this will continue after air travel builds back up to pre-Covid levels, but airlines have to be pretty conservative everywhere right now. Delta and United have majorly cut frequency and service to many markets. Southwest, however, has added many new markets during Covid - such as MIA, ORD, Long Beach, Houston Intercontinental, and others. STL is enjoying some of those new destinations with Southwest already and adding several this Spring yet. I think we will get another Southwest lump of new destinations once the demand returns to the skies.
Great list. Thanks for that. I didn't realize how limited Delta's STL service is at just 5 destinations - fewer than United (6), the same number as Frontier and without service to 4 of their hubs (Boston, JFK, LAX, Seattle) of their 2 focus cities (Raleigh and Cincy).jshank83 wrote: ↑Feb 25, 2021Here is my destination breakdown.
I want to like Delta but it’s hard for me to fly them much when besides LGA, I don’t fly to any of their hubs cities ever. They did run Saturday only Orlando service in March and summer for a few years until last year.wabash wrote: ↑Feb 25, 2021Great list. Thanks for that. I didn't realize how limited Delta's STL service is at just 5 destinations - fewer than United (6), the same number as Frontier and without service to 4 of their hubs (Boston, JFK, LAX, Seattle) of their 2 focus cities (Raleigh and Cincy).jshank83 wrote: ↑Feb 25, 2021Here is my destination breakdown.
If AA adds one more destination, maybe Las Vegas (where no legacy carrier currently flies) or Pittsburgh, they'd have as many as Delta and United combined. And would then fly to a non-hub destination. It wouldn't take a whole lot for them to reestablish themselves as far and away the leading legacy/international/business carrier in the St. Louis market.jshank83 wrote: ↑Feb 25, 2021I want to like Delta but it’s hard for me to fly them much when besides LGA, I don’t fly to any of their hubs cities ever. They did run Saturday only Orlando service in March and summer for a few years until last year.wabash wrote: ↑Feb 25, 2021Great list. Thanks for that. I didn't realize how limited Delta's STL service is at just 5 destinations - fewer than United (6), the same number as Frontier and without service to 4 of their hubs (Boston, JFK, LAX, Seattle) of their 2 focus cities (Raleigh and Cincy).jshank83 wrote: ↑Feb 25, 2021Here is my destination breakdown.
I think covid is going to be the last stake in the heart of CVG for Delta. It’s almost entirely dismantled now except mostly hub and Florida flying.
I dislike AA the most out of the big 3 but if they add more here it is going to be hard for me not justifying switching to them as my preferred legacy.
Beyond just the amount of destinations, the frequency (and the seat capacity) to most of the destinations that are still served by Southwest (or others) is way lower than in 2000/2001. For example, STL still has nonstop service to Little Rock (LIT) with 2 roundtrip flights a day (pre-COVID) and had ~180k seats available in 2019. But in 2000, there were 9 roundtrip flights a day with ~970k seats available. Many larger destinations have similar changes (although most not as extreme as LIT), like Boston that had 362k available seats on 2,308 flights on the STL-BOS route in 2019 down from 596k seats on 4,214 flights in 2000.matguy70 wrote: ↑Feb 24, 2021When STL was TWA's Hub
I think it is interesting to note that when TWA was at their highest level of flying through their STL mega-hub, the airline served approximately 75 Nonstop Mainline destinations and 2 EU Mainline International Destinations - and their feeder had 24 additional small markets (like Madison/Council Bluffs/Lincoln/Branson etc) on TWexpress small planes.
TWA 2001 STL
Today STL International is serving 76 Nonstop Mainline destinations. (most all of the small market TWE destinations are gone in addition to Paris and London EU destinations). That being said, when comparing destinations for STL travelers - most can get where they need to go on one flight in the continental USA, Toronto, and Caribbean Destinations.
No big deal. Some stuff on the website is outdated. BNA just got another destination (Destin) and 3 more flights today. I think it is going to grow far faster than I expected. At least we get an uptick next month.
