steved5480

Perhaps no earth-shattering news as far as SWA directly is concerned, but an interesting read complete with a pretty pictures. I'd imagine our friends over on the DL Board will be vocal re: MEM's numbers (not that it's truly a shock).

The Cities That Have Lost the Most Flights

You know the drill.... if you don't have a WSJ subscrption & their paywall nabs you, Google the thread title.

traveller001

MKE (down 45%) wouldn't even be on that map if not for the ill conceived RJET idea of resurrecting nearly all former YX flights at roughly 110 per day . Using all RJET aircraft of course. That didn't work well for RJET YX or F9... Only remaining flight out of that debacle is ONE F9 flight per day to DEN. Down from a consistent 3 per day for many years plus a seasonal to MCO.

If they had looked at it 1,2,3 or 6 yrs ago it would have been a totally different picture.

MKE is down a tad on flights per day versus FL+WN but probably about the same as far as seats with upguaging from 717s to 737s and 700s to 800s. Share is down a bit primarily because DL has added more flights and upguaged quite a few.

rtalk25

Interesting read. I was surprised BOS has lost flights. It always seems like B6 and WN are adding routes there.

Also, it seems that the report didn't account for seats but just flights.

I'm also surprised this was quoted: "There are no more nonstop flights between New York-LaGuardia and Baltimore, for example." Is that really helping the case? Atleast choose a route where people weren't just using it for connections.

There is also too much focus mentioned about loss of service from PHF, and loss of low fares to NYC from there. While it may have been nice, Southwest has put those LGA slots on larger cities.

DenverBrian

This. It's hard to bemoan the loss of "flights" if you're also celebrating the loss of RJs for mainline. I would have liked to see this analysis in terms of numbers of seats.

tatterdema

RNO has lost a ton of flights and seats in the past 10 years.

3Cforme

Lots of MEM service on NW - about 200 daily flights at time of merger - was on Saab props (gone), 50-seat CRJs (DL has gone from ~500 in 2009 to ~150 today), and DC-9s. None of those types would be economical today.

NW from MEM had non-stop service to about 100 destinations on the date the DL merger was announced - just two of whoch were not served by DL non-stop from ATL. The decline in flight count shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

A better analysis would be to compare originating traffic at MEM from 2008 to today, with a view to how changes in availability have perhaps caused people to drive or not travel. One could also look at how total travel (including connections) has changed to bigger airports that lost n/s service.

rsteinmetz70112

Has the WSJ changed its pay wall rules? I just googled the article title clicked on the link but I kept getting a pop up telling me to login or subscribe.

LegalTender

What explains Orlando-Sanford (+71.4%) and St. Petersburg-Clearwater (+93.9%)?

Charters? Cruise traffic? ULCC's?
__________________________________________________ ________

joshua362

"Airlines say the reduction has come about because eight of the biggest airlines have merged into four giants."

“We have a responsibility to maximize the productivity and profitability of our fleet,” Southwest spokesman Dan Landson says.


We have the stupidest or most corrupt government. The only thing the keeps profits at reasonable levels (not gouging) is competition. And they let it happen...

LegalTender

mbaker0936

Allegiant is the reason for the huge growth

bgriz18

Interesting article and data table.

But you can't look at flying in a vacuum just based on the number of flights. Number of flights, number of destinations, seat count are all important. I am curious on the seat count as the airlines have started transitioning over to more mainline.

hazelrah

America's insatiable appetite for cheap flights.

dc2

I am really sad about this. Last year, I discovered how nifty it was to make a connection in MKE when going DCA-SEA. I really like the MKE terminal.
I have been trying to book an award ticket in Sept to go DCA-MKE-SEA. There is one, but it is way too early (the DCA-MKE flight leaves at 6:10am, metro doesn't start running 'til 5am). I tried making a custom connection through MKE with a later DCA flight, but that's a no-go because there is just one non stop flight that goes from MKE-SEA (at 9:40am). It seemed like it was a lot easier to book through MKE last year.

adambisi

Remember international flights have exploded in BOS and all time pax records have been hit.

I looked back at July 2011 in BOS.

The drop can be attributed to the following:

American Eagle leaving BOS - lots of YYZ/LGA/JFK lawn dart flights -around 900 flights both directions combined in July 2011 - but a lot of that loss was filled by B6 and WN.