guv1976

https://www.ithacajournal.com/story/...ght/779733002/

george 3

How will the airline properly measure demand to support more than once a week service when the only weekly flight is on Saturday morning? Sounds like waived landing fees and the use of an idle airplane. And I'm so thrilled that our governor finds $22 million for another infrastructure black hole via this Ithaca airport renovation.

pinniped

A flight to Ithaca on Dec 22?

Don't worry - that thing is getting canceled or diverted to Philly during the snowstorm.

mizzou miles

Wow, what a barn-burner that will be. All of once a week, and not even timed to allow connections to Caribbean markets. I'm sure it will be soon upgauged to 738

superweak

Some of these responses are reminding me why I disliked NYC when I lived Upstate...

Here's hoping for good things for the route; a connection to AA's second-largest hub opens new options. A RON would have been nicer timing of course.

formeraa

Just like any business gauges demand for a "new" store location. The airline industry actually has more flexibility to try different things, because they can more easily start services without such a huge capital investment. Generally, the technique is called "test and learn" and is used throughout the business world these days. Try the Saturday only flight. If it is successful, then expand it to a seasonal daily flight. If that works, perhaps a daily year-round flight...etc.

MSPeconomist

December 22nd seems like an odd date to start a route given that many of the ITH based travelers are Cornell faculty, visitors, and students. Demand for this route will be pretty dead during the break between semesters.

dls25

Actually, when school is out of session is usually when people who live in college towns go on vacation...

george 3

I'm not sure what AA will learn from a Saturday morning only flight in terms of weekday demand. The way its set up now, it appears they are targeting week long vacation travelers.

pinniped

I guess it makes sense in this case if everybody's taking finals the previous week and looking to get out of town before Christmas.

I assume AA has pretty good data on how college town demand works...

bridge29

I don't understand the negativity towards this flight. Good for ITH, good for CLT, good for AA.

The pattern lately seems to be AA pulling out or reducing service to small cities, happy to see them expanding, even if just a Saturday-only flight.

Hazelthyme

I'm skeptical, too, but willing to wait and see how this plays out. I'd imagine a weekly Saturday flight would have about the lowest possible demand for most of the year, although the inaugural flight on 12/22 might well be busy if that coincides with the end of fall-term exams at Cornell (and to a lesser extent, Ithaca College). However, I'm also willing to assume that the airline has a way to gauge demand for new flights/routes, and that there's some method to the apparent madness of testing out a flight on what's usually NOT a busy business travel day.

Long term, I'd be happy to see CLT as another possible destination from ITH -- it would make it easier to connect to other non-hub cities in the southeast, and offer another connection option that's not through PHL when things go sideways in bad weather. It's not the direct flight to Boston or Chicago I might have hoped for, but hey -- I'll take anything that's not a reduction in service.

guv1976

Stay tuned. I'm hopeful about seeing ITH-ORD nonstops sometime in 2019, after the ITH terminal renovations are completed, and three new jet bridges are added to the existing one.

If AA wants to capture more of the ITH-Asia traffic, ITH-ORD would make a lot of sense. (ITH-ORD would also be good for ITH-West Coast service.)

arlflyer

Lol, everyone is acting like AA has lost their mind and is starting A380 service to some farm field somewhere. Y'all know that Cornell has over 20k students and a couple thousand faculty, right? And that a lot of those people have a lot of money? They need to sell 50 tickets, once a week. And it's not like the people who fly out are going to be stranded - they can route back through Philly on other days, just like they always have. In my experience, ITH fares can be astronomical at the right times of year (you can guess when), and people will probably snap these right up.

Cissigys

Very true, although I feel like a lot of the comments hint at AA introducing this with too little frequency, not that they shouldn't have added it to begin with.

I live in Ithaca, and travel a lot for work. I love the introduction of CLT, but won't be flying it until they add more frequency. Yes, I could reroute back through PHL, but it's way too common for bad east coast weather to shut down EVERYthing into and out of ITH in the winter. I'll keep booking out of SYR from December to March, because at least when things go bonkers with the weather I have backup options to get where I need to be going. This is still a great step in the right direction!