Many markets have a net increase in nonstop destinations but fewer total flights per week than last year. Here are changes in domestic nonstops from July 2016 versus July 2015 at select airports:

Change in the number of nonstop domestic destinations:

+10 phl
+8 mco
+6 cle
+5 mke
+5 phx
+5 ord
+4 sfo
+3 bna
+3 mci
+3 rdu
+3 las
+2 sea
+2 ind
+2 dfw
+2 cvg
+2 aus
+1 stl
+1 msy
+1 atl
0 den
-2 ttn
-2 tpa
-3 msp
-8 iad

Change in number of weekly nonstop domestic departures:

+28 mco
+28 mke
+17 phl
+15 sfo
+12 phx
+11 bna
+10 mci
+10 sea
+10 stl
0 rdu
-2 cle
-2 ind
-4 dfw
-4 las
-9 cvg
-10 aus
-17 den
-19 ord
-21 ttn
-21 msp
-21 tpa
-32 atl
-42 iad

These domestic markets from 2015 don't appear to be in the summer 2016 schedule:

ATL ORD
AT LMCO
ATL PHL
FLL CVG
IAD ATL
IAD DTW
IAD CVG
IAD MEM
IADL AS
IAD MEM
MSP ATL
MSP IAD
MSP PHL
MSP TTN
MSY ATL
ORD IAD
PHX IAH
RSW DEN
UST TTN


Virtually all new nonstop city pairs being added this spring/summer are either 3x or 4x per week. That includes a number of seasonal markets restored from last summer which ran 7x/week in 2015.

The cities with the largest flight increases only see an add of 4x/day (28x/week) so we're not talking a lot of increase in any one place. A more typical story is something like Cleveland...six more nonstop destinations than last summer but net departures are flat (2x/fewer per week). Atlanta is fairly flat...new markets are nearly offset by discontinued ones with net nonstop markets increasing by one. But weekly departures are 32 fewer...4 or 5 fewer departures on an average day.

Given that the fleet is still very tight they are getting a lot of buzz on new markets. Once the fleet count starts expanding down the road a bit I wonder if they will backfill...operating more markets 7x/week and keeping more of them all year. Or will they go for market volume, adding more 3x-4x /week markets and doing heavy seasonal adjustments.