Cha, Cha, Changes

[shaka]

I can understand more direct flights into Philly, but why CLT?

Their O&D is worse than Pittsburgh.

Thanks

 

[funguy2]

shaka: Good Question...

And Boeing Boy... You're right... so far more questions than answers... I suppose all will be revealed soon enough. Any kind of major schedule changes take time to implement and plan for... I suspect we will begin to hear things...

 

[Light Years]

Anyone have any predictions of point to point routes? As far as DCA LGA BOS, will they just upgrade the routes we gave to Express back to mainline? Other than the three focus cities, what else will there be? I mean how many BUF-RDU type stuff can you really do?

25% seems steep.

 

[funguy2]

Anyone have any predictions of point to point routes? As far as DCA LGA BOS, will they just upgrade the routes we gave to Express back to mainline? Other than the three focus cities, what else will there be? I mean how many BUF-RDU type stuff can you really do?

25% seems steep.

Well, I've said before, that I think the company needs to take the LGA/DCA/-BUF/RDU/GSO/ROC/etc stuff back from Express, do it with less frequencies (does BUF-LGA and RDU-LGA really need 9 flights/day? Can they do it on 6 or 7? I think so, especially if you use larger aircraft, so that you offer the same number of seats/day). Then use the "excess" slots to start new point-to-point service to points not currently served nonstop by US Airways... I think major midwest biz markets and Florida should be targets, for reasons I have outlined before (not trying to restart the LGA-Florida nonstop debate).

I think the company should do this, and maybe that is their plan... But I will stop short of "predicting" it, because I really don't know what they are planning.

I agree... Cutting conx traffic in half does seem bold.

 

[mweiss]

On another note, if only 25% of the [mainline] flights are in/out of the hubs there's going to be a lot of expensive gates not needed but still under lease.

Assuming for a moment that additional gates don't need to be secured outside of the hubs, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. When you're looking at a hub, you need lots of the following:

1) Gates
2) People
3) Ground equipment

Bypassing the hubs for most flights means less of all three are needed. Ground equipment can be sold, redeployed, or used as spares as older units wear out. People are a bit harder to address; some may be offered positions at outstations, others may either be laid off or have reduced hours.

So even with the gates being left unused, we should still see cost reductions to the airline (sgain, assuming that additional gates don't need to be secured outside of the hubs).

 

[USA320Pilot]

New domestic point-to-point flying is planned from US Airways’ key Northeast cities to larger domestic markets, which can support O&D traffic with higher yields and load factors.

US Airways will not release its plans early, but here are some points of interest regarding new point-to-point flying: The top ten U.S. domestic O&D markets in regard to revenue are New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, Boston, Denver, and Houston. Interestingly, Philadelphia is number twelve, Charlotte is number fifteen, and Pittsburgh is number sixteen.

Separately, the company plans on operating flights from US Airways key Northeast cities to all key leisure markets with Low Cost Carrier (LCC) type aircraft turn times and utilization.

The Transformation Plan envisions expanding European and Caribbean service, with potential new transatlantic routes from Philadelphia to Star Alliance hubs of Warsaw (LOT Polish Airlines), Vienna (Austrian Airlines), Oslo & Copenhagen (SAS Scandinavian Airlines), and Birmingham (BMI). Note - BMI’s main operational base is London’s Heathrow airport.

US Airways will maintain its Charlotte to London and Frankfurt flights and with 15 Philadelphia transatlantic flights in the summer, the company will have 19 widebody aircraft to support 17 flights (9 A330s and 10 B767s).

There will be further new Caribbean routes and possible new Latin American markets that include San Salvador, Guatemala City, and Panama City.

Regards,

USA320Pilot

 

[robbedagain]

is usair planning on other routes such as phl or clt to vancouver canada or zurich switzerland or even something like phl to iceland?

 

[mweiss]

Anyone have any predictions of point to point routes?

In 2003, 252 city pairs had sufficient traffic to support three mainline flights per day (defined as having at least 135,000 pax/yr). Of those, 83 neither began nor ended at a legacy hub. Many were Hawaiian interisland, Pacific coast, or WN-"owned" routes. However, here are some that are in US's territory, hubless, and not WN-"owned," in decreasing order of passenger traffic:

DCA-LGA (no surprise there)
LGA-BOS (ditto)
LGA-FLL
LGA-MCO
DCA-BOS
BOS-MCO
LGA-MIA
BOS-BWI
BOS-MIA
BOS-RSW

In addition, the following markets support nonstop traffic (again in decreasing

order):

LGA-ATL
LGA-ORD
PHL-MCO
PHL-ATL
BOS-ATL
LGA-DTW
LGA-DFW
PHL-ORD
BOS-ORD
DCA-ORD
PHL-FLL
PHL-BOS
BOS-DFW
DCA-ATL
PHL-DFW
PIT-MCO
PIT-ATL

CLT has no routes with sufficient traffic. BOS has eighteen (LGA, DCA, ATL, ORD, MCO, SFO, LAX, PHL, FLL, BWI, DTW, MIA, DEN, LAS, EWR, TPA, and RSW).

It's worth noting that fifteen BWI routes support sufficient traffic, but it'd most likely be very hard to pull customers away from WN at that airport.

 

[funguy2]

Excellent list mweiss... Gives us an idea of the markets they are probably considering.

 

[wench]

cute- I like that

 

[robbedagain]

dont forget that abe-mco route did extremely well even for the months after delta pulled out of the route it was full in the am and the pm from mco to abe there is sufficient traffic for the run and if we got that back we could kick southeast out

 

[MrAeroMan]

I can understand more direct flights into Philly, but why CLT?

Their O&D is worse than Pittsburgh.

Thanks

My guess would be costs. It costs about $1.50 for each pax out of CLT versus something like $9.00 per pax out of PIT. Multiply that by the number of pax and that's a lot of cabbage.