urbanSTL

rbb wrote: ↑

Jan 24, 2022

dweebe wrote: ↑

Jan 24, 2022

Apparently there are no non stops or even direct flights between Cincinnati and Kansas City. Any travel between those two cities requires a plane change at fun places like ORD or ATL and travel times of 5-8 hours.

Ooh, that's gonna stink for me if not restored post-pandemic. My one semi-regular business flight is (or at least was before the pandemic) was between STL and CVG. 

If the best possible flight time is 5+ hours then it might be better just to drive it...

-RBB

I don’t think it’s coming back. For us or KC.

Best hope probably is Southwest makes it a spoke for us. But not sure how likely that is for awhile.

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Jan 22, 2022

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Jan 22, 2022

^Chicago as 12th surprises me. Do you have a history of these going back for any significant period of time? Would be interesting to look at trends.

I have data back thru 2016. I didn't do 2020. 2021 is only qtrs 2 and 3.

For 2021 data it also lists the carrier with the largest market share and that share. Also, the carrier with the average lowest fare and their share also . 

STL O&D Data

A couple of years ago I pulled some more of the older data going back to 1998 for STL for a blog post. There were some really interesting comparison looking at the end of the TWA era to today. Some of the O&D numbers from the late 90s were pretty shocking, like Indianapolis and Little Rock at over 150k O&D passengers annually to basically nothing today (although LIT has grown back some since Southwest added service back). Of course TWA was flying over 1 Million seat between IND and STL which obviously helped.

It only goes up to 2018 numbers, so a bit dated now. Here's a little busy visual showing 2018's top O&D airport pairs for STL and how they've changed since 1998. The numbers below are all annual both directions compared to the daily values. Full post with some more analysis

^Oh, well done! That's basically what I was thinking of doing myself but I think you've made it nicer than I ever could have. The sharp decline in O&D to Chicago is absolutely mind blowing. DTW kind of makes sense, since we lost so much automotive business during that period. The drop offs to Cleveland and Kansas City are also a bit surprising. I suppose a lot of that looks like a gradual shift from business travel to leisure.

Yeah, a lot of the big declines for "nearby" cities I would guess is driven by losing the massive amount of seat capacity from TWA/AA in late 90's earlier 00's along with increased post 9/11 security adding travel to total air travel time and making driving a more competitive option. If you're in Chicago and all of the sudden the cost of your ticket goes up 50% because of less excess seat capacity and you have an extra 30 minutes added to your travel time for security, it is going to push more people onto I-55 rather than just stop them coming to St. Louis altogether I would think. It would be interesting to go back and look at the ticket costs in the O&D data and see how they changed for pairs like ORD-STL in conjunction with the seat capacity changes. Honestly, I think these numbers make a great argument for Amtrak to say there probably is a lot of demand between Chicago and St. Louis that would convert from driving if you could beat driving time significantly with high(er) speed improvements and offer a reasonably priced ticket. Those old O&D numbers show that literally hundreds of thousands of people were willing to take cheap quick flights between the cities that aren't being served now.

The cities that are further away like, DTW, CLE, and BWI that saw big drops, probably didn't make up nearly as many of those trips from driving. I can't imagine that many folks in Baltimore think driving to STL is a better option. CLE might be a better example because some of those BWI folks I'm sure switched to DCA and contributed some to the big jump in their O&D. CLE wouldn't have many clear alternatives airports and is a pretty long drive. I think either people/businesses on CLE-STL either didn't travel at all or swapped to other destinations that were more accessible once capacity was cut.

^ Nice work! 

Do your ORD numbers include MDW? I worked at TW in '98 and there was always a fierce fare war between TW and WN between the two markets and probably around 40 daily flights between the two. TW would run 10-12 flights daily from STL - ORD and another 10-12 ORD - STL. I'm guessing fares have jumped when compared to COL/inflation.

mtl_stl wrote: ↑

Jan 27, 2022

If you're in Chicago and all of the sudden the cost of your ticket goes up 50% because of less excess seat capacity and you have an extra 30 minutes added to your travel time for security, it is going to push more people onto I-55 rather than just stop them coming to St. Louis altogether I would think.

Makes sense. The two most driveable destinations (Chicago and KC) seeing the biggest drop-offs. Also, it's probably much less than driving, but Amtrak may have taken some market share over the last 20+ years. Before 2006 there were three trains a day to Chicago. Since then there have been five. In 2019 they probably accounted for 200,000+ trips from St. Louis to Chicago.
Detroit and Cleveland might be more a product of those cities' economic malaise since 1998. Although Cleveland has come back from some really low lows in 2013.

IAD (which currently has a United direct to STL) may also have taken some of the BWI traffic, along with DCA.

pdm_ad wrote: ↑

Jan 27, 2022

^ Nice work! 

Do your ORD numbers include MDW? I worked at TW in '98 and there was always a fierce fare war between TW and WN between the two markets and probably around 40 daily flights between the two. TW would run 10-12 flights daily from STL - ORD and another 10-12 ORD - STL. I'm guessing fares have jumped when compared to COL/inflation.

ORD and MDW are broken down separately in the chart above, but it seems pretty clear that the battle for the Chicago-St. Louis route you mention, with lots of extra capacity induced lots of O&D. I don't have the seat capacity number on hand, but the combined O&D for ORD+MDW to STL in '98 was almost 1M while in '18 combined it was a little over 400k. And those two airports move pretty near in tandem in the gif showing them over time.  I'm actually surprised to see the MDW didn't start consistently beating ORD for O&D passengers until around 2015.

^The loss of so many big local ad houses probably didn't help. I really just think the decline in business travel probably says a lot, even about the further destinations. There would have been a lot of auto management traveling between DTW and STL because of the assembly plants here, particularly the Chrysler plant, which was enormous and pioneered some of their last big product launches. (Minivans, four door minivans, and four door trucks. My childhood boy scout troop helped top test the four door minivan before it was even publicly available. Took it on a cross-country trek with a legion of rambunctious kids.) Not as certain as to what sorts of connections might have existed between DFW and BWI, but I'd be surprised if they weren't there. Defense, maybe. Energy. Telecoms. Who knows? But we lost so much that it stands to reason the business travel took it on the chin.

Final 2021 stats for STL are out.
Total passengers 10,351,533
Up 64.2% from 2020
Down 34.8% from 2019

Cargo was up 27.6% over 2020

https://www.flystl.com/uploads/document ... -FINAL.pdf

Interesting...

Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines to Combine, Creating America’s Most Competitive Ultra-Low Fare Airline

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-rele ... rline.html

What a great merger! They’ve now successfully become this country’s most unreliable airline.

gregl wrote: ↑

Feb 07, 2022

Interesting...

Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines to Combine, Creating America’s Most Competitive Ultra-Low Fare Airline

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-rele ... rline.html

Some route overlap out of Lambert.

• Frontier Airlines: Cancún, Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, Orlando (Seasonal: Atlanta, Chicago–O'Hare, Punta Cana)
• Spirit Airlines: Cancún, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orlando, Tampa (Seasonal: Fort Myers, Pensacola, Phoenix–Sky Harbor)

wabash wrote: ↑

Feb 07, 2022

gregl wrote: ↑

Feb 07, 2022

Interesting...

Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines to Combine, Creating America’s Most Competitive Ultra-Low Fare Airline

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-rele ... rline.html

Some route overlap out of Lambert.

• Frontier Airlines: Cancún, Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, Orlando (Seasonal: Atlanta, Chicago–O'Hare, Punta Cana)
• Spirit Airlines: Cancún, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orlando, Tampa (Seasonal: Fort Myers, Pensacola, Phoenix–Sky Harbor)

Guessing them both flying daily to Cancun won’t hold up. Can’t see the combined airline flying double daily.

ORD in Frontier got cut also just fyi.
Tampa for Spirit at the very least is going seasonal. Might also be cut after April.

It’ll be interesting to see the fight for the newly merged HQ. I don’t know how worthwhile or prudent it could be for STL and Missouri to try and lure them here, but it’s worth a shot.


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sc4mayor wrote: ↑

Feb 07, 2022

^ Frontier will own 51%, if it even goes though.  There seems to be some uncertainty about their ability to pull it off.  But if they do, Frontier won’t leave their Denver HQ and hub.

I tend to agree this this. I can’t see them leaving Denver. Their parents company is in Phoenix so if they do a full rebrand I guess they could move there or decide they want to use the Spirit offices in Florida. Can’t see any other option beside those 3.

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Feb 07, 2022

sc4mayor wrote: ↑

Feb 07, 2022

^ Frontier will own 51%, if it even goes though.  There seems to be some uncertainty about their ability to pull it off.  But if they do, Frontier won’t leave their Denver HQ and hub.

I tend to agree this this. I can’t see them leaving Denver. Their parents company is in Phoenix so if they do a full rebrand I guess they could move there or decide they want to use the Spirit offices in Florida. Can’t see any other option beside those 3.

Even if they do, you damn well know they'll put it out as a serious proposal in order to get major tax breaks from wherever they will stay/move to. It's the nature of the beast these days.

jshank83 wrote: ↑

Feb 07, 2022

wabash wrote: ↑

Feb 07, 2022

gregl wrote: ↑

Feb 07, 2022

Interesting...

Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines to Combine, Creating America’s Most Competitive Ultra-Low Fare Airline

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-rele ... rline.html

Some route overlap out of Lambert.

• Frontier Airlines: Cancún, Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, Orlando (Seasonal: Atlanta, Chicago–O'Hare, Punta Cana)
• Spirit Airlines: Cancún, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orlando, Tampa (Seasonal: Fort Myers, Pensacola, Phoenix–Sky Harbor)

Guessing them both flying daily to Cancun won’t hold up. Can’t see the combined airline flying double daily.

ORD in Frontier got cut also just fyi.
Tampa for Spirit at the very least is going seasonal. Might also be cut after April.

It seems Allegiant may be the big winner here (and to a lesser extent Southwest), as overlapping routes by Spirit/Frontier get streamlined.

Commission meeting notes:
Airport hopes Spirit/Frontier merger helps us pick up Mexican/Caribbean routes

Lufthansa reps were here 3 weeks ago and yesterday.
Gate operations should be made in the next 10 days. Sounds like doing departures out of T2 is still an option. I’d guess wingtips being right there is playing into it.
Encouraged by bookings. Ahead of some other US markets.
Chicago Station Manager is handling STL also.

T1 pre-security Pasta House reopened
Pizza Studio in A reopened
Cali Pizza Kitchen in T2 should open shortly.

1 more airport layout plan survey comes out in around 3 weeks

Final numbers for 2021
68% of 2019
Last 6 months were 80% of 2019
Southwest was 32% connecting

LUFTHANSA! https://youtu.be/fOBVCGRYCyE