BobH

+1 The author of the article assumes that everyone that uses ground transportation to get to DTW works for the auto industry.

For starters, typically, in any given community, the rule used to be that for every person who worked in manufacturing, 5 others had jobs doing something else.

Places like Washington DC are exceptions of course.

Bob H

pbarnette

You are looking at the wrong table. You are looking at a table of large MSAs, ranked by median income, not all MSAs by median income. When measured by real per capita income against all MSAs, Detroit comes in at 86, one spot behind Memphis. Atlanta comes in at 53 and 10% higher than Detroit, and MSP comes in at 23, some 30% higher than Detroit. A place like Houston, with high pay and low costs, is some 46% higher, and the highly-educated, highly-compensated places like Boston, RDU, SF, Seattle, etc. are 50% higher or more. When you account for cost of living, Atlanta moves up the list, while Boston and SF would slip.

As for flight to the suburbs... Detroit's level of population loss is pretty much unparalleled among large cities and is why it has such massive problems with depopulation (fiscal issues, urban blight, etc.). Atlanta has actually grown since 1990 in population (and that growth has accelerated faster than in Minneapolis) and retains pockets of extreme wealth (Buckhead) that do not have parallels in Detroit.

Detroit is relatively poor. Sorry. It isn't the barren wasteland some urban decay porn would lead you to believe, but it is a stagnant, decidedly middle-income market that lags Minneapolis and Atlanta in income and, especially lags Atlanta in economic and population growth.

Bagels

As I've written here and elsewhere for over 12 years, all this talk about air traffic, hubs and wealth is nonsense; legacy airline movements (and therefore hubs) are still dictated primarily by business traffic. Look at DEN, which is an enormous local market (thanks mainly to its isolated location), but UA's massive hub was absolutely hammered and subsequently reduced to more-or-less a regional one by WN targeting price-sensitive passengers. DTW remains a strong international business market; its business traffic rebounded much faster than its leisure and will likely continue to grow for the short-term. A small but sizeable chuck of DTW's business market is comprised of persons whose work is based here, but choose to live elsewhere.

Despite the prosperity MSP enjoyed in the 2000s, its local air traffic failed to grow at rates projected and published in the 1990s (in fact, throughout much of the decade - and before the meltdown - DTW was surpassing it, despite the MSP's region's faster growth). Its inability to anchor premium international flying was long a frustration of NW; much of its local NRT market was Japanese tourists stopping over in the MSP region to take advantage of (some) tax-free shopping (heavily marketed by NW).

k2

You're making points that appear accurate but aren't that relevant to the conversation. Read what Bagel wrote which is spot on. MSA charts and gentrification within city limits tells us squat about how much businesses spend. Nor does it indicate how much of the population has enough disposable income to spend on leisure travel.

motytrah

I've always thought pre-merger international traffic at MSP was dictated by two words. "World Gateway". Those words didn't really make sense to me until I did a MSP-DTW-DUS trip years and years ago. The international arrivals infrastructure at DTW is significantly larger than MSP because NW decided DTW was going to be the "World Gateway" for them. DTW is a great airport for Intl to Mainline. One of the few where I can go from door open, immigration, customs, bag drop and sipping a drink in the club in 15-20 minutes.

Frankly, I can't fault NW at the time for building out the facilities at DTW. There's just no space to do that kind of expansion at MSP.

Bagels

In the late 1990s, NW operated a significantly larger international operation at MSP than DL does today. OSL, HKG, a second daily NRT, KIX, FRA, CDG and even MEX were all attempted unsuccessfully. MSP's lack of international service has nothing to do with its facilities and everything to do with its local market.

MSPeconomist

For a long time including at least to the mid 1990s, international arrivals at MSP used the Humphrey terminal. It had almost no services (other than immigration and customs) and required a bus to the main terminal for connecting flights. Nevertheless, there were some advantages for locals. I could easily go through immigration and customs very fast (assuming that a delayed international flight hadn't srrived just before us), walk very little, and grab a taxi at the curb so that I could get to downtown Minneapolis about a half hour after the wheels touched the ground. [International departures used the main terminal, so those big aircraft were apparently towed some distance.]

MSPeconomist

The second daily 747 nonstop MSP-NRT and vv was operated for many years, at least most days of the week and/or in high season. It was a nice option, although it didn't work for all intraAsia connections.

Bagels

Similar situation in DTW: until 2002, international arrivals into DTW utilized the Berry Terminal, with departures in the L.C. Smith (typically the former DL gates on Concourse C, which were acquired by NW in the mid-1990s) and Davey Terminals (typically Concourse E). But again, it had little impact the airport's international service.

It operated year-round in the late 1990s/early 2000s and was re-timed to connect with the Interport flights.

Throw Down Your Leavy Screens

$71,000,000 / (269 seats * 2 flights/day * 365 days/year) = $361 per seat-day at 100% pax load.

At 75% load, that's still only 361/0.75 = $482 per seat-day

$482 in REVENUE is way below the price of even a V-fare ticket. Did the reporter mix-up "revenue" with "profit"? An average of $482 profit per seat I can understand if there are lots of people who are paying J, C, D, I, Z, Y, B, and M fares, and they end up subsidizing lots of pax in Y. But to say that the revenue per-seat is that low doesn't seem right to me.

Bagels

$71M is the contribution from the LOCAL market (people traveling to/from DTW) - in other words, it excludes revenues from connecting flows.

pbarnette

Attempted is a strong word. Several of those routes lasted only months. And some were, frankly, stupid to begin with. I mean, OSL? Just stupid. And KIX is where TPAC service goes to die.

CDG, FWIW, has been successful once DL committed to it (NW never would commit), with added summer lift.

pbarnette

DEN must be one heck of a "regional" hub given that it is the 6the busiest airport in the US, almost as large as DFW. MSP and DTW would be so lucky.

As for DTW being a "strong international business market", the lack of non-DL international service suggests somewhat otherwise. BA couldn't wait to drop service once Bermuda II died. Yes, it fares somewhat better than MSP, but it isn't that strong.

Bagels

LOL, you enjoy skewing points around. The discussion was clearly about legacy airline growth, and I clearly wrote the UA's hub became regional as WN captivated the price-sensitive traffic.

BA's withdrawal had more to do with Pfizer withdrawing from the A2 market and the subsequent loss of its lucrative contract.

Regardless of who operates DTW's direct intercontinental services, it's still strong for the market size, especially given that the actual city of Detroit is primarily a welfare state.

And this may be the first post I've read from you that you didn't attempt to mention rich, wealth, etc. Good job .

BobH

To be more precise, they closed their research lab in A2 which used to employ 3000 people. They also had their own fleet of planes which flew out of Willow Run to /from places like St Louis, New Jersey and Conn. but the people who took these flights didn't get frequent flyer points !

Along the same line, Chrysler flew a 319 to Germany every day when they were owned by Daimler.

Bob H