interesting article in wsj

[robbedagain]

In the market place section of today's wall street journal an interesting article about why is delta afraid of the silver comet airport in dallas ga about 30 miles northwest of atl

 

[WorldTraveler]

you need only look at Love Field to see why you either stop in the bud or be prepared to deal with it for decades.

 

[robbedagain]

Allegiant may start at that airfield. Accrding to the article. Love is served by couple carriers whereas the lit ga airport is not served at all

 

[WorldTraveler]

the original intent was that there should be no commercial service at Love Field after DFW opened. Because WN did not sign the agreement, they could not be forced to move. We are now living with the reality of that decision decades.

 

[eolesen]

Secondary airports will always be a threat to the big network carriers. Midway, Sanford, Williams-Mesa, and Trenton are four examples where it's worked out fairly well.


But there's no shortage of failures or also-rans. Peotone & Gary (both in Chicago) and Mid-America (St. Louis on the Illinois side) never caught on. Long-rumored service to both Boeing Field and Paine Field (both in Seattle) has never surfaced, despite two separate runs at it by Southwest and Allegiant respectively.

The WSJ article is behind the paywall, but the following blog post isn't...

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/why-big-airlines-fight-with-small-airports/?_r=0

There's a huge difference with what's happening with existing satellite/secondary airports, and what's happened with DAL->DFW. DFW was built to replace DAL. If somehow it were possible to resume service to Stapleton in DEN (unlikely given they've redeveloped it) or Mueller in AUS, you'd have the same argument as DAL/DFW.

You could try to claim MDW is in the same situation with ORD, however there really was never any pretense in Chicago that MDW would be replaced by ORD. They just made it public policy not to invest anything into MDW until Midway Airlines ramped up operations, and Southwest followed.

 

[jimntx]

the original intent was that there should be no commercial service at Love Field after DFW opened. Because WN did not sign the agreement, they could not be forced to move. We are now living with the reality of that decision decades.

WT, that is technically not correct. WN did not sign the agreement because WN did not exist at the time the agreement was signed by Dallas, Ft. Worth, the existing airlines serving both cities airports, and the Feds. 

 

[AdAstraPerAspera]

You could try to claim MDW is in the same situation with ORD, however there really was never any pretense in Chicago that MDW would be replaced by ORD. They just made it public policy not to invest anything into MDW until Midway Airlines ramped up operations, and Southwest followed.

 
I think the most ridiculous thing about MDW is that it continues to operate. An airfield with an operation that size would never be shoehorned into a 1 mile by 1 mile square if it were built today, the margin for safety is too thin. I don't like looking into driver's windshields on Cicero as I land. I'm so glad I no longer have to be woken up on my early morning commute by the airplane slamming into the concrete and braking like all hell. This tiny airport surrounded on all sides by urban landscape has already claimed one life, how many more need to be taken before they either shut it down or condemn the surrounding area so they can actually lengthen the runways and build the runway safety areas necessary to bring it up to modern standards?