abqsunport

Has AA ever been one to start service for incentives? For example would they be willing to anwser these incentives:

International Incentive

Thanks so much for the help.

Efrem

I don't think anyone here is qualified to answer that question, unless we have a lurker from AA's business planning department. If they haven't been told about this, someone at ABQ is asleep at the switch. If they haven't taken ABQ up on it, it's presumably because they've decided not to.

Were I AA, which I'm not, it would depend on how close the routes would be to profitability without these incentives. They'd have to be darn close for this to push them over, once you take into account all the additional expenses of getting people to ABQ (the local population can hardly support this air service, after all), which is not now an AA hub, and the rest. Personally, I doubt this would make enough of a difference to justify this service on top of its existing Mexico service from DFW. With DFW being a major hub they're not about to eliminate that.

I commend ABQ for trying to encourage more flights. I hope it works, in part because I have a son and a future daughter-in-law there and I fly AA to visit them. Unfortunately, I don't think this offer will do the job. It's probably more attractive to airlines that don't already have a hub as close as DFW.

abqsunport

Thanks for the very good and polite info.

Well you are probably right, but for a city of 780,000 people (metro), and 70% of those people being hispanic you think we could support an RJ daily. However, I don't have the O&D numbers, but I do know that because ABQ is pretty much the main airport for the Santa Fe/Taos area (Which brings area served by ABQ near 1,000,000) I'd assume we could support a daiily MEX flight on a Mexican Carrier who has their hub their. What do you guys think?

acf573

There's cross-posting, and there's cross-posting :
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=526643
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=526639
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=526637
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=526636

mvoight

Is seems kind of odd that ABQ is offering to get an airline for travel to mainly tourist destinations (not counting MEX, of course). Generally I though airports try to promote travel with themselves as the destination in mind.

MikeBOS

I believe AA's service to Eagle, CO is similarly subsidized by the ski areas (Vail and Aspen).

CloudCoder

I wonder if AA would ever go back to a "focus city" type of approach, like they tried (and failed) to establish in SJC, BNA, AUS (and perhaps other places too). If so, ABQ would be a dandy choice. For a smaller airport, the facilities at ABQ are absolutely superb.

JGR01

AE served Duluth MN prior to 9/11 with 3 daily flights. They pulled out as part of the general shrinking of the industry at that time.

The city 'enticed' AE to return (NW was the only competition with service to MSP and DTW only) with a subsidy I recall at $1million for the first year.

Within 18 months of returning (hat in hand since they rehired many of the same worker they had before and tried to convince business travelers to trust their return as a long range committment) AE pulled out again.

The flights (3) were FULL in the summer time and really quite full in the winter with business travelers. What hurt the service was the poor crew planning and scheduling that AE is known for. Morning flight (6:30am) was crewed with staff that brought the plane in the night before (like 7pm departure from ORD). When that 'last night' flight was late (high percentage) the morning flight had to go late because of crew rest requirements. So the 6:30am flight would leave at 9:15am .. which caused major missconnects at ORD. You would get up, look at aa.com and see the major delay, call the EXP desk for your re-route and go back to bed for a couple of hours!

The mid-day flight was a turn-around so the crews never got off the plane.

There were not really major snow or cold weather related operational issues .. there was some fog at times . as well as deer on the runways.. but AE killed their own service by operating the morning flight 50% of the time late and the evening flight 50% of the late. The service became untrustworthy as far as the business traveler was concerned.

Yes .. AA (AE) does respond to incentives ... I think however they would want a market that was higher percentage of expensive fare business travelers. This incentive looks to be very very low fare tourist oriented...

CloudCoder

If I were NW and if a government paid $1 million (or for that matter, any amount) to my competitor, I'd be sorely pist.

Robt760

Given this is the AA forum, I would say that an ideal candidate for this would be AS. ABQ would be a great destination for them to add coming from SEA/PDX and other cities served by AS. They already serve a few destinations in Mexico, so why not.

IMHO, AS has a more suitable/less corporate crew/employees that that of AA, CO, US, Delta, etc. They would be more apt to do something for the long haul, unlike most of the others previously mentioned.

abqsunport

Very Interesting @:-) However, I have always thought AS to be very conservative when it came to expansion.

Seat1A

AA still hasn't confirmed the service, but another NM airport (sierra blanca regional near ruidoso) is offering FAA funding to subsidize new flights from DFW:

http://www.krqe.com/expanded.asp?REC...BNews%5D=11752

if it goes through, here's to not driving 2+ hours from ELP/ABQ!

silverthief2

Great idea, Robt. I'd love to see AS come to ABQ. Not holding my breath, though. Same goes for any service from Ruidoso, though I'm sure fares would be extremely high (much like United at SAF).