ashill

Apples and bananas (assuming you typed that backwards). MSP has a fortress hub with service that (like any large connecting hub) far exceeds the O&D demand to go against. AS is was the only carrier at STS, so they get all the benefits of a monopoly on air travel to that airport. And the costs of providing a few 600 mile Q400 flights are rather lower than the costs of providing 1600 mile 737/A320 flights.

ETA: Didn't realize that UA, AA, and SY had started service (see below). But there's still far less competition at MSP.

sltlyamusd

I'd really look forward to flying SEA-STS a lot more if they switched to the E175. One time I flew STS-SEA with a headwind, followed by circling SEA on approach, followed by waiting for a gate. I think I was on the plane for over 3 hours in total.

Also, tons of cheap flights and more frequency from SFO and OAK could be poaching some passengers...

DrAlex

Not any more - UA & AA are flying there (SFO and PHX). The runway expansion in 2016 allows for 737s, so there were rumblings of WN at one time, but those have quieted.

Last Jan, Allegiant was flying there as well.

WebTraveler

Keep in mind two things: (1) a bunch of these flights have been cancelled...one for the Horizon pilot problem, and (2) for the fires they had.

Also many places were destroyed from the fires, so tourism will drop off a bit as it naturally does.

WebTraveler

Has anyone figured out where all these airplanes are going? I see that while some of these routes are dropping at SFO, the cut ones at PDX (i.e. Kansas City, St. Louis, Omaha) are re-emerging. But those are Horizon routes. Where are the Virgin America aircraft going? Will we see that on the new Seattle-Pittsburgh flights, for example? In theory, the Airbus planes on the traditional SFO routes should end up somewhere in the Alaska system. I know that Alaska is running a peak PDX-ORD on some heavily traveled days with Virgin America Airbus equipment.

eponymous_coward

They'd want to suck some of the pmVX planes out of the system in order to convert them to the intended configs (12 F, rip out the screens, etc.)

DrAlex

The STS numbers are easily accessed here. The load factor was 0.62 in Jan 2018 vs. 0.68 in Jan 2017. But, January is traditionally one of the lowest load factor months YOY. I think competition is mostly to blame for that small decrease. I do not believe the fires have THAT much of a pull on the business of STS, but that's an estimation...

diver858

I could see AS cutting back during the week, but not weekends - particularly during the summer.

WebTraveler

What competition exists at STS? There are a few airlines, sure, but none of them fly to the same destinations. I am sure there's some connecting traffic that is related to competition, but I am not so sure how much of connecting traffic Alaska gets.....I mean, if you are flying east I am not sure you are flying to Portland or Seattle. Seems as if you'd use United to SFO or AA to Phoenix.

WebTraveler

Yea, I guess that does need to happen and could all be part of managing the fleet. Lots of plains to paint and reconfigure. Could take awhile, and may be part of the drop off of services right now....

DrAlex

If all outside variables were eliminated, I would postulate that a little more than 10% of Alaska's traffic was connecting traffic (Maybe 15%? Up to 20%?). They seem to have lost about 10% of their load factor when competition for departing STS started. But only if life were univariate...

ashill

Until 2017 (except Allegiant service that came and went in 2016), AS was the only game in town, so all traffic to STS connected in on AS. So the new UA and AA service virtually certainly took away some traffic from AS that used to connect. AS has at least some connecting options out of four of the five airports they serve from STS (SEA, PDX, LAX, and SAN), though I agree that the SNA flight is probably nearly all local traffic. I don't have ready access to the O&D figures; if someone can readily grab the O&D figures to SEA and LAX, it would be interesting to see how they compare to the passengers on those nonstops.

radtechtraveler

It would also be that the PDX-STS flight was moved the the TERRIBLE time of 630am for the winter months, and the 3 times my wife and i were on those flights thats what people complained about as soon as they sat down on the flight. We actually had to switch to the united connection flight solely because of the timing. My wife risked missing MVPG this year because she hated the early time

milypan

Here's what I see for O&D from the STS market. Multiply by 20 to get total annual passengers (inbound and outbound). This was 4Q16 to 3Q17. It's market level, so SNA would get folded into LAX.

LAX 6568
SEA 2373
SAN 2308
PDX 1938
LAS 934
PHX 888
AZA 319 (surprised this codes as a different mkt than PHX)
GEG 204
ANC 135
DEN 127

ashill

Cool; thanks. Assuming that the O&D split is 50/50: From BTS, there were 28,000 passengers who flew STS-SEA (that direction only, including beyond-SEA connecting traffic), so 85% of the STS-SEA traffic was O&D and only 15% connecting; @DrAlex's guess was right on. For LAX+SNA, it's 78k passengers with 65680 origin passengers, so 16% connecting. (Of course, that includes SNA, which is presumably 0% connecting.) PDX: 19380/25k = 22% connecting. There is more SAN O&D traffic than flew STS-SAN nonstop, so presumably some SAN traffic connected. This reporting period is mostly a time when Horizon was the only game in town; they accounted for 80% of the traffic at STS for Oct16-Nov17.

Those passenger numbers suggest that very few customers take a connection to fly into STS instead of just flying to SFO/OAK and driving, but also that there's a possibility to stimulate demand with nonstop flights.