Originally Posted by
bernardd
Can I ask where the 100 per day number comes from and if its, for example, the average over the week? I was on the SJC-AUS flight last Friday evening and both that AND the WN non-stop went out full, so the demand that day was way over 300 passengers in total last Friday given there were two other flights earlier in the day. Is the problem more that the route has high peaks, but the troughs are to low to make it viable? Thinking about the peak patterns, is it also that it's hard to get an aircraft full in both directions, so that it's not viable to run the service less days, for example only Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday?
It is from Form 41 DOT data which is actual results from ticket data that the airlines provide to the DOT. I looked it up for the last 4 quarters of data and found the average daily one way pax count on the route. It is an all up average, so obviously there will be heavier flights than others.
I'm sure WN can make it work better because they funnel so many people onto routes they never intend to fly because they get them to do one stops to where they really want to go. But the fact of the matter is, there are really only 100 people each day who want to go each way on this route and for 3 daily flights it's just too much.
Originally Posted by
tusphotog
If there are only 100 pax/day on that route, why did AS throw a second frequency on it long before WN started flying the route?
Probably an attempt to stimulate traffic since some markets respond well to having more than one daily frequency. AUS just didn't in the end.