Originally Posted by
guv1976
Oops! Correction made.
UA ended ITH-IAD when it started ITH-EWR. So come January, the only scheduled flights out of ITH will be to the Metro NYC area.
In addition to having students from Europe and Asia, Cornell does have a fair number of students from South America, so ITH-JFK-GRU will be possible.
In the past, DL flew DTW-GRU nonstop. Other South American destinations use ATL connections on DL, although some partner flights would depart from JFK.
Students flying to/from their home countries would occur at most a couple times per year, on dates that are highly concentrated around the beginning and end of semesters, plus possibly spring break. Two CRJ-900 flights per day during the week around the start/end of a semester would be less than 1400 foreign students, which is only a fraction of Cornell's foreign student population and of course doesn't include foreign postdocs and faculty who generally are somewhat older, but often try to return to their home countries annually.
A bigger chunk of ITH passengers would probably consist of Cornell and other university faculty (plus postdocs and graduate students) flying in and out of Ithaca for conferences, seminar presentations, and collaborations. Some alums (and parents of students) would fly into ITH for various events, but many would drive instead since many of them live in New York and other northeastern states.