N830MH

Here the official release from F9:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fronti...160000085.html

Nice going, F9!! Keep'em it coming!!!

davywavy

I was just puzzled that you said it. Had you said that Spirit might start AZA-DEN, I might have agreed.

I'm intrigued that they picked GSO-MCO, which already has GSO-SFB from Allegiant. But it has worked for Frontier on ABE-MCO, which is doubling service (to 4 x weekly) this winter and also has Allegiant to SFB.

IllinoisMan

WN operates out of the reliever airports in the LA basin, and they will eventually end up flying out of AZA in the future. I doubt it will happen until the new terminal is built on the north side of the field, but if memory serves the Ops manager at AZA said there is room for somewhere around 80 gates on the north side after the final build out. One of those concourses will most likely be the WN concourse.

davywavy

The AZA new terminal could "eventually expand" up to 60 gates (in 2030) and and it "could" open five years from now:

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/loc...a4bcf887a.html

But since it doesn't yet have Federal funding, five years might be optimistic:

But the airport’s board of directors expressed concern upon seeing the plan for the first time Monday.

Member Thelda Williams said Gateway needs a backup plan so the new terminal can be built if FAA and other federal funds get bogged down in Congressional infighting."

The new terminal would rise on the airport’s now-vacant east side in four phases:
Phase I: A terminal with 14 gates would handle 3 million passengers a year and could be needed by 2014. It would cost $144 million.

Phase II: Four additional gates would boost capacity to 4.4 million passengers and offer more than 10,000 parking spaces. Cost: $145 million.

Phase III: Thirty gates and parking garages would expand capacity to 10 million passengers. The airport would plan for light rail service, but no date was set for this $963 million expansion.

Phase IV: The terminal would max out at 60 gates to serve 20 million passengers a year. This would occur after 2030.
The expansion will require the existing two airlines serve more cities, and probably additional airlines, Kusy said. Gateway hasn’t looked closely at whether projected revenue increases align with the expansion costs.

Indelaware

Greater Los Angeles has significantly greater population and traffic than metro PHX. Moreover, while WN does not have hubs per se PHX has a great deal of WN connecting traffic utilizing 28 gates there. WN may end up serving AZA but probably not in the next couple decades.

knope2001

Next is Trenton, twice-weekly to Orlando.

Trenton to Orlando
10:30am Fridays
4:00pm Mondays


Orlando to Trenton
7:25am Fridays
12:55pm Mondays


Looks like North Carolina and New Jersey are the two new states.

And it looks like they are doing a market-a-day rollout, which definitely spreads out the PR buzz somewhat.

With the two new states listed, the other three markets must be in existing states so we can cross off places like Charleston, Huntsville, Bridgeport, Burlington. I suspect the other three will be similar low-frequency leisure markets, and they could well be out of MCO. Lexington? Roanoke? Wilkes-Barre?

knope2001

I think I misunderstood the promo descrtiption...they are adding new routes in six states, two of which are new. That does not mean six new routes.

The new routes so far have involved:

North Carolina (new)
New Jersey (new)
Arizona
Florida
Colorado

So that means there might just be one additional route, something like MCO-LEX which adds Kentucky to the list as state #6 (not a new state for Frontier).

I suppose in theory there could be several additional ones as long as they don't represent more than six total states, like they could also add COS-RSW or MCO-AVL (Asheville) without going being the six-state total. But I am guessing we have just one more new route coming, linking Orlando to a city in a state already served by Frontier.

knope2001

For fun, I plotted out what early February looks like for Orlando at the moment:

42 nonstops per week:
14x to DEN
5x to MDT
4x to ABE
3x to GSO
3x to MKE
3x to COS
3x to BMI
2x to OMA
2x to TYS
2x to TTN
1x to MSN

I don't see any DSM or MCI flights to Orlando this winter.

Most of the days "come out right" when you plot the aircraft movement at Orlando, except for a few instances. I suspect that these instances will be filled in by one or more additional Orlando routes.

Sunday
Plan sits idle until 12:20pm

Thursday
Plane sits idle until 1:07pm

Saturday
Plane sits idle until 2:25pm

Then there's Tuesday. Unless I made a mistake, Tuesday has a plane idle most of the day in Orlando. There are 3 planes which overnight in Orlando each day, but on Tuesday essentially one of those planes does nothing right now.

I'm guessing that at least there will be one more Orlando desitination added, probably with morning MCO-xxx-MCO flights on Sundays, Thursdays, and /or Saturdays. But of course the February schedule may have more tweaks coming.

N830MH

Nice!

Here the official release from F9.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fly-fr...140000516.html

Keep it up!!! What's next? How about DAB, JAX, MLB, APF, SRQ, GNV?

knope2001

Essentially this plane comes in from Denver on Monday night and then does nothing all day Tuesday. At least for some weeks in Fall, this is being remedied by the Monday PM DEN-MCO flight not operating. I would guess that we're not really looking at a plane sitting idle in MCO on most Tuesdays, nor do I think that this will be remedied by a bunch of new Tuesday service to be announced.

I do think the slack we see at this moment on Sunday, Thursday, and/or Saturday mornings will be taken up by service expansion we'll hear about soon.

One thing which is very apparent when working through the new schedules is that except for COS and some DEN flying, everything else is being operated by Orlando-based aircraft. That's good for flexibility and for crew staffing -- far easier and less costly to bring a plane and crew into Greensboro and have then turn right around and fly back out, versus doing an overnight there. The downside of this, however, is that the classic morning departure / PM return schedule that many vacationers seem to favor to maximize time away and minimize hotel stays is not available. And in some cases it's tough to incorporate weekends into the travel schedule. Looking at the new Trenton service announced today illustrates the issue. Southbound there is a Friday morning flight at 10:30am which is pretty desirable -- take Friday off of work and Saturday/Sunday are already off. But the other Southbound flight is on Monday at 4:00pm. Most working people don't want to start their vacations on Monday afternoon. Similar issue on the returns. That Monday northbound flight at 12:55pm is likely to be popular. But the Friday morning 7:25am departure from Orlando to Trenton could be a tough sell. Ending your vacation by having to get up at 4:30am for a flight home isn't top on most people's list.

Certainly not everybody has the same constraints. Retired people, self-emlpoyee people, and nontraditional shift workers are less bound by the classic schedule -- lots of restaurant people have Monday off, for examlpe. And in markets that are large enough or under-served enough (like where Fronteir is the only nonstop in town) people can be drawn to the less-popular times anyway. But it can make for tougher sledding.

Knoxville has a tough row to hoe, to put it nicely. Their loads have been generally lackluster to Orlando, and with this winter's schedule the scraps they are being given won't help them turn the ship around.

Southbound
8:55pm - 10:26pm Sunday
8:40pm - 10:11pm Wednesday

Northbound
6:30pm - 8:12pm Sunday
6:15pm - 7:57pm Wednesday

Northbound is pretty desirable, especially the Sunday PM return. But those southbound times are going to be a tough sell. Starting a vacation at 9:00pm on Sunday night is rough. That doesn't mean zero people will use those flights. But I'm concerned that Knoxville is in essence being set up to fail. We've seen underperforming markets being given "leftovers" to piece together a schedule before and produce predictable failure. We'll see how things turn out in this case.

N830MH

Yes, unfortunately, they didn't workout very well. It's too much competition against G4. I always though F9 has done extremely very well. Maybe F9 will have reconsider again. Maybe F9 will start TRI or CHA-MCO. This should be done very well. There is no competition at all.

Indelaware

TTN will not be a highly profitable route. (That's not to say it will be in the red.) It will only be leisure and since they don't fly weekly and many in the area wouldn't think about TTN as an option they will likely need a fair amount of continuing advertising to make it go.

How about TOL, CMH, SAT, AGS?

Indelaware

Where does F9 have its maintance done? There out quite a few outsourced options not too far from MCO which could account for some of the down time seen there.

MikeFromMKE

Looks like DEN-FAR is the new route for today. They used to serve this route with the Q400, so we'll see what they do with mainline.

nddomer04

Looks as if this is the final new route announcement for now. The Facebook page states " Our final new route announcement of the week takes us between Denver, CO and Fargo, ND."

Last week, the page read "Next week we’ll announce new routes with destinations in six states - two of which are NEW states for us!"

We now have those six states: CO, AZ, FL, NC, NJ, ND