urbanSTL

shadrach wrote: ↑

Aug 07, 2017

Chalupas54 wrote: ↑

Aug 06, 2017

But I agree, there's a ton of smoke.

'ton of smoke' as in:

Where's there's smoke there's fire?

or

All smoke and no fire?

A bit of both, IMO.

So... it turns out that cargo facility might not be completely dead after all. I had forgotten that it was the reason that Lambert was on the list of infrastructure improvements proposed by the Trump administration ~6 months ago. I did a bit of digging in the old Post-Dispatch articles about it, and found that the initial feelers for the project resulted in a 3-year agreement for studies, planning, and paperwork in late 2014. If it's still on track, that would place the agreement ending late this year/beginning of next. However, the facility was to incorporate a dual U.S.-Mexico customs facility; given the recent tensions between the Mexican and American governments, I really hope that they aren't its death knell.

Another factor working against this is that I'm not entirely sure of the reliability of the owner of the company that wants to do this. I really don't want him to be yet another one of the snake oil salesmen that St. Louis seems to attract so often. Plus, who is he going to get to fly the cargo?

If, however, this was still a go, cleared all the regulatory stuff in the U.S. and Mexico and got all the other paperwork, etc. squared away, then construction could begin as early as next year, with most of the first few phases being finished by 2020. I still have severe doubts, especially after the China cargo debacle, but if this project even comes close to what's been proposed, it'd be something that St. Louis really, really needs to happen. Lambert does have a lot of positives that could make this project work: a central location in the U.S.; lots of unused space that would be redeveloped (the old McDonnell-Douglas facility); excess capacity; and lying adjacent to a Class 1 rail line.

I'd like to get some more recent information about this from the Post-Dispatch. Does anyone know how to send in one of those "Q and A" questions? Is it just a standard Letter to the Editor?

I don't know the status of the proposed cargo facility. The airport is however currently having the taxiway leading into the ramp area of the proposed cargo facility redone. Its being weight stressed for a 747-8

From AirlineGeeks.com: The Near Death and Resurrection of St. Louis International Airport

Airline hubs are generally not the kind of place that change much in terms of service. In the United States, given the last decade of consolidation among airlines, most hub airports will likely stay hubs for their respective airlines for years to come, with only growth or minor downsizing as time goes on.

However, this was not the case for St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL). Over the past 17 years, St. Louis has seen a major decline in service along with losing their hub status from American Airlines, and seeing Southwest Airlines take over as the dominant carrier in the city.

Full story at the link. There's not much there that we didn't already know but still, it's an interesting read.

-RBB

Meanwhile in Nashville...

http://mediacentre.britishairways.com/p ... =HeroStory

From May 2018, British Airways will launch a five-a-week service from Heathrow, Terminal 5 and will be the only airline flying direct between Europe and the capital of Tennessee.

Trololzilla wrote: ↑

Aug 04, 2017

Shouldn't Lufthansa be able to fill planes even easier than BA, what with all the German-owned companies in the STL metro?

No -- London is the easiest city to get international air service from the US due to geography. People will happily fly STL-LHR-FRA, but not STL-FRA-LHR. Germany requires backtracking to connect to most major European cities.

Isn't the big thing to note is that British Airways has three more 788s that arrive next year but won't be ready by summer? And that considering their tendencies in using those its almost certain at least one will be used for starting another US route? And tendencies in that would seem to point towards St. Louis? Its just way too early to announce anything related to those planes in case manufacturing delays occur and that you wouldn't announce this far ahead anyway.

Guess is they had to announce Nashville now because the leak plus get in right when the temp facility there opens to get times they want. Since there may not be space otherwise since someone else could jump the gun on It for TATL or Southwest expands international there which would use up time as well. (They certainly will add some more service there too) Also they may have been making harder pushes for it longer than here, which seems to have only been done in a significant way starting last year. The amount of smoke coming from here and connecting the dots makes me think its more likely than not something is announced in a few months relating to one of the three later 788s.

I know I've said it for the last few years, but if BA is going to expand again here in the US, it will be STL.

The only two cities left vying for BA service is STL and IND. Does anyone have any real, logical, possible argument (outside of incentives) that an airline would select IND over us?

chaifetz10 wrote: ↑

Aug 08, 2017

Proximity to Chicago. Seriously... it would essentially be another overflow location for Chicago residents in the south burbs and would still draw from some of markets nearby like Cincinnati, Louisville, Dayton, etc and even some regional markets like Central Illinois (Champaign, Decatur, etc), Evansville, and Ft. Wayne.

STL can also pool from cities like Louisville, Kansas City, etc. Even Indianapolis

chaifetz10 wrote: ↑

Aug 08, 2017

Proximity to Chicago. Seriously... it would essentially be another overflow location for Chicago residents in the south burbs and would still draw from some of markets nearby like Cincinnati, Louisville, Dayton, etc and even some regional markets like Central Illinois (Champaign, Decatur, etc), Evansville, and Ft. Wayne.

My only counter to this would be that I am assuming it would be a lot cheaper to fly out of Ohare than Indy (if indy had a nonstop). As a comparison Chicago has round trips in the $500s (low 400s on Norwegian) and Nashville is starting at $900 (and I imagine it won't stay that low once the intro fare is over) So I doubt many people are going to be driving from the south burbs all the way to Indy just to pay $400+ more per ticket.

chaifetz10 wrote: ↑

Aug 09, 2017

Chalupas54 wrote: ↑

Aug 08, 2017

chaifetz10 wrote: ↑

Aug 08, 2017

Proximity to Chicago. Seriously... it would essentially be another overflow location for Chicago residents in the south burbs and would still draw from some of markets nearby like Cincinnati, Louisville, Dayton, etc and even some regional markets like Central Illinois (Champaign, Decatur, etc), Evansville, and Ft. Wayne.

STL can also pool from cities like Louisville, Kansas City, etc. Even Indianapolis

Someone living in Louisville is not going to drive to St. Louis, they're just going to fly to Chicago. Same with Kansas City and Indianapolis. The question was to provide an argument as to why Indianapolis is better situated than St. Louis and the answer is geographical proximity to more larger cities than St. Louis is. Louisville, Cincinnati, Dayton, etc etc are all within an hour and a half's drive of Indy. It's at least 4 hours from KC, Indy, Louisville, etc to get to STL.

I think this is a valid point. However, I believe STL offers a better package than IND (clear bias).

^ It seems whatever package that is being put together here is largely a recent thing as well. May be due to much better finances for the airport and other parties finally doing something. Also stripping out incentives here would be the much better option based on numbers. That and can't rule out both getting it since whats being delivered later could allow that. Ideally maybe whats best is both get different routes by different carriers and networks so as to not possibly dent each other if its the same. Also the airport there isn't too far from here especially the metro east (around 3 hours drive or even less from there), which also is why there is no nonstop between the two.

Coming weeks will be interesting with Southwest starting to extend schedules after spring break and plane crunch. With them adding gates recently them doing more expansion here seems given.

moorlander wrote: ↑

Aug 09, 2017

Makes sense.

Edit: I would imagine given this, the Airport will literally give them an offer they can't refuse for next year.

FWIW: The Airport was able to deposit $7.7 mil into the Airport Development Fund. These funds may be used for various projects, including the Airline Incentive Program.

City/Airport issued $58 million in bonds to finance airfield, terminal, parking projects.



https://www.flystl.com/uploads/document ... inutes.pdf

chaifetz10 wrote: ↑

Aug 09, 2017

Chalupas54 wrote: ↑

Aug 08, 2017

chaifetz10 wrote: ↑

Aug 08, 2017

Proximity to Chicago. Seriously... it would essentially be another overflow location for Chicago residents in the south burbs and would still draw from some of markets nearby like Cincinnati, Louisville, Dayton, etc and even some regional markets like Central Illinois (Champaign, Decatur, etc), Evansville, and Ft. Wayne.

STL can also pool from cities like Louisville, Kansas City, etc. Even Indianapolis

Someone living in Louisville is not going to drive to St. Louis, they're just going to fly to Chicago. Same with Kansas City and Indianapolis. The question was to provide an argument as to why Indianapolis is better situated than St. Louis and the answer is geographical proximity to more larger cities than St. Louis is. Louisville, Cincinnati, Dayton, etc etc are all within an hour and a half's drive of Indy. It's at least 4 hours from KC, Indy, Louisville, etc to get to STL.

I've actually known people to drive from KC or Nashville to fly out of St. Louis, if you can believe it.

Chalupas54 wrote: ↑

Aug 09, 2017

moorlander wrote: ↑

Aug 09, 2017

Makes sense.

Edit: I would imagine given this, the Airport will literally give them an offer they can't refuse for next year.

Also think if the planes they have in order was ready in time for next summer as well it would have been different too. That and think the gate situation in Nashville was a factor in that waiting could mean they don't have the time they want

On incentives too. Some of those were announced were very recently. I wonder if those weren't even involved in this since it could have come too late.

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Aug 09, 2017

I've actually known people to drive from KC or Nashville to fly out of St. Louis, if you can believe it.

While I'm sure there are a *few* people who would do something like this, there will in no way be enough people to do so which would justify starting a new route.

The "hassle" of making a connection in Chicago, Atlanta or another city is not enough to have many people consider a multi-hour drive to a different city.

gregl wrote: ↑

Aug 10, 2017

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Aug 09, 2017

I've actually known people to drive from KC or Nashville to fly out of St. Louis, if you can believe it.

While I'm sure there are a *few* people who would do something like this, there will in no way be enough people to do so which would justify starting a new route.

The "hassle" of making a connection in Chicago, Atlanta or another city is not enough to have many people consider a multi-hour drive to a different city.

Agree with Greg, As a frequent business flyer, I will take a short flight and connection over a long drive any day. The time I can use on wifi or just the extra time sitting in a plane seat or at a gate reading is a plus over driving in itself.

gregl wrote:

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Aug 09, 2017

I've actually known people to drive from KC or Nashville to fly out of St. Louis, if you can believe it.

While I'm sure there are a *few* people who would do something like this, there will in no way be enough people to do so which would justify starting a new route.

The "hassle" of making a connection in Chicago, Atlanta or another city is not enough to have many people consider a multi-hour drive to a different city.

This is true, but I know that I am one who has done this. Only when I was much younger however when traveling with my family.


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gregl wrote: ↑

Aug 10, 2017

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Aug 09, 2017

I've actually known people to drive from KC or Nashville to fly out of St. Louis, if you can believe it.

While I'm sure there are a *few* people who would do something like this, there will in no way be enough people to do so which would justify starting a new route.

The "hassle" of making a connection in Chicago, Atlanta or another city is not enough to have many people consider a multi-hour drive to a different city.

There must be a significant number doing it, if I know several of them. I don't know that many people!

I'd be willing to guess it's a significant enough number for most of us to know (or be) someone who's done it, since we meet a lot of people. But I'd also guess it's still not a statistically significant number from the perspective of someone who has to ration seats and gas and crew time out to airline route maps. Just spitballing here: A hundred people a month would be significant enough anybody who travels much probably knows someone. That's over a thousand people a year. In the course of ten years that's more than one in every three hundred people in town. That doesn't sound like much, but if you adjust for the fact that if you travel you're more likely to know other people that do and maybe you cut that figure in a quarter. Or smaller. So even that small a figure might be more than enough to satisfy the "I know a guy" anecdote. But it's not enough to fill anything much bigger than a Cessna 208 Caravan on a legitimate route. Even a Caravan could do that in as little as three flights a week (1404 seats on a three flight a week schedule for 52 weeks) and still have a little extra space for overflow. That's just below 86% utilization. Good. Probably very good. But I bet there's real flights that do better. And that is a VERY light passenger aircraft. (That's what Air Choice One flies, just to be clear.) So . . . you don't even need the tiniest of RJ loads to get to a number where we all know a guy. I think you can safely say that we won't really be drawing from any further away than Columbia unless it's connecting traffic. Which is a problem. We have connecting traffic now. It's growing fast. But how do you get folks from Southwest to something that goes TransAt. (Or better yet TransPac. Yeah, yeah, I saw the numbers you posted. I know. Folks want to go to castle country. But come on guys. Asia is a LOT more fun than Europe. Trust me on this. Much cooler. London is so 19th century. We're moving forward. We want immigration? Let's get some boats in our port from places where people want to come here!)

Joking aside, yes, there are people that drive to get the cheap flight. I've . . . booked a flight from Chicago in the middle of the night at the last minute for one such relative. Recently. But the number probably isn't enough to really make a dent in boarding statistics. I could be wrong. Show me the numbers and I will happily eat my words. With fish sauce. I'll even enjoy being wrong on that one. Anyway . . . let's see what it actually takes to really get a flight over water. Somehow. Lord I miss the grand old TransSomethingSomething days.

My other half was at a luncheon on Friday for people in the area getting some kind of awards.

Anyways, one of the ladies that got an award was introduced as having her new primary focus being to secure a flight to Europe within the next 12 months. Apparently, there was a large cheer when this was announced. I think she works for the regional port authority or something like that. She doesn't work for the airport. I figured if she is getting recognized for whatever she did in the past year that she must be a go getter. Hopefully that is a good sign for this next task.