NotHamSarnie

Wait a sec... you're assuming most people who fly are just like you. I fly out of one of those absurdly priced airports (regularly the most expensive in the nation). I could drive 1.5 hours in either direction and not do that, but I don't. Why? Because I value MY TIME much more than the money I spend on the air tickets. I'm not alone - nobody I know does that drive. I'm sure some leisure travelers do, but nobody who travels for business. I leave my house 50 minutes before departure time, which gives me time to park my car, get through security, and board. No hassle. I don't want to be competing with others for a seat, either. Many of us use our commuting time to do work, which we can't do in your scenario.

gooselee

The part I bolded above is OP's biggest problem. He can't get over the fact that many, many people value saving an hour or three of productive time over $50 or $100 or more.

MKEflyer95

The NYC airports really should stop using RJ's all together, like MKE-LGA has five daily flights on CR9's, it can cut down to only 3 flights on A319's. LGA can reduce at least 20% of its current flights by switching from RJ's to mainlines on many of its routes. Same with JFK.

Also surprisingly for my spring break trip, it was cheaper flying out of MSN rather than MKE. And MSN is a regional airport. Over two thirds of the flights coming in and out of MSN on DL are on RJ's. Luckily I wasn't on one but that was most definitely a surprise to me

Anudoric

WN is definitely not the largest domestic airline right now.

Regional airlines make it possible and profitable to fly small markets. WN does not operate anywhere in my state (since they only fly 737s).

Delta is phasing out all CRJ-200s.

diburning

GOOD!

MS02113

I believe Delta actually intends to keep about 50 of them, but that's way down from a couple hundred just a few years ago. Some markets simply won't support anything larger than a CRJ-200.

BiggAW

Oh wow, aren't you so special? What rinky-dink airport are you flying out of? The problem is, for every one of you, there's 10 people who have to be cost-conscious and drive, and another 10 who live in the major markets. What makes you think that you're so special that your planes should be able to clog up the rest of the system for the vast majority of travelers flying out of medium- and large-sized markets?

Part of the problem is that our airlines are being forced to handle 300-1000 mile trips that should be handled by regional rail and bullet trains, but that's another story. Our highways are clogged by people who should be on regional rail and commuter and transit lines as well, so it hurts both sides that we have this gaping hole in the middle of our transportation system.

The California HSR project will help this in one particular market, as the Amtrak NEC already does in a market that might otherwise warrant air travel, like BOS-WAS, BOS-BAL, BOS-PHL, etc. As it is today, SF-LA is a break-even driving vs. flying, about 6-7 hours either way door to door. A nationwide HSR system with frequent connections to regional rail, commuter rail, transit, busses, parking, rental cars, airports, ferries, and other means of transportation would take a LOT of load off of our airline system, and allow for more capacity and more reliable operation of routes that are not rail competitive/possible, like transcon and international.

It's not that I cannot fathom that. It's that a tiny minority of people who think they are so important shouldn't be able to clog up the air system for everyone else.

Exactly. That's part of my point. You go from 50-80 pax to 140+ pax, and the numbers look a lot better. That's part of what WN has done, and part of why their model is more efficient. Now instead of 10 pilots, they have 6 pilots. That's 4 pilots that don't have to be paid, 2 aircraft that don't need maintenance, etc, etc.

And apparently LGA is a hub too. Why does DL need two hubs in one city? DL's massive inefficiency is almost comically stupid. Of course, the real answer is that they ran themselves out of slots at JFK because they hogged them up with baby jets. No one should be hubbing in NYC in the first place. Leave that to DTW, ATL, MSP, and the other big airports that have the huge capacities and are more modern and less constrained than the JFK's and LGA's of the world. De-hub NYC and ban jets with less than 143 seats, and all the congestion problems would go away.

There's always weird little nuggets you find in a system that go against the normal grain. It just depends on who is going where and when and where there are extra seats or not enough.

We addressed that earlier in the thread. They are not by pax-miles, although they handle more pax boardings than anyone else.

Where is that? They serve the entire lower 48 except for parts of Montana and North Dakota. State borders don't mean much. PVD, for example, serves about 1/3 the land mass of CT, and all the way up to about I-90, and has overlap with MHT, BOS, BDL, and even JFK/LGA/EWR. So that's 4 states right there. Right now, I have tickets booked out of BDL for one trip, and out of PVD for another. That's just where the low fares were available on flysouthwest.com. Different state, same function.

LOL. Any market worth serving will support a 737. Sounds like they need to get the erasers out and clean up their map.

gooselee

Then there are those individual people who think they alone are so important that their one approach to time management and travel should force the removal of alternate travel options for everyone else.

Why not just go all-in, list the airports you fly to/from, and mandate that those are the only airports worthy enough of a continued existence (to be served, of course, by flysouthwest.com's decadent 737s).

BiggAW

The interest of the masses of airline passengers should trump those of a small minority of passengers.

Very funny. Southwest serves all CONUS cities that warrant commercial air service. Many of which I don't fly to, but there is obviously demand for commercial air service, since they have determined that they can drop at least a dozen or more 737's a day to each airport.

gooselee

You again forget that airlines are a for-profit business, not a democracy.

There is obviously a demand for commercial air service in many small cities, as evidenced by the continuing success of airlines that send planes there.

But we could go 'round and 'round 'til the cows come home, and none of it will make a difference. None of the ideas you propose are anywhere close to being realistic, and you reject any facts that help to explain current realities.

What is it, exactly, that you want us to do? If an airline serves a route that meets my needs, you want me to not purchase the ticket just on principle? You surely must have more time and money on your hands than all the rest of us.

kettle1

As stated above several times this is a troll thread. The question about the 717 headroom has been answered. The OP has had a similar thread taken down in the past by the MODS. Nothing to see here.

Perhaps the OP should move to "fly over country" for a year and see what it is like. I guarantee he would change his thoughts about small airports and small planes very quickly. Airlines are in the business to make money, period.

WN is a good airline overall. DL, AA, UA as well. OP stick with WN, since it meets your needs. For me - time is $$$ and time is something I do not have enough of running my company. I need to get from A-B fast and many of the airports I need to get to WN does not serve. I do not have time to take a train, car or moped. I fly 6-8 flts a week to some very small cities/towns. I live in LAS and HNL and have many options to fly. WN works on some trips. I usually take DL or UA, as I like to ride in FC (that's just me). OP stick with WN. It is a win-win for you!

Do a little research about how much US Mail is sent on airlines to these small towns you do not want airlines to serve. You would be shocked! Shocked, I say!

Happy travels!

BiggAW

That's part of the problem. Authorities like the PANY&NJ have no cajones to go in and do something really positive for NYC and really drastic like banning sub-143 seat aircraft from the 3 NYC airports. I'm not sure how the gate fees are charged, but they must be on a seat basis, not a plane basis, otherwise the economics wouldn't work on the baby jets. At least a step forward, if not instituting an outright ban, would be to require all planes to pay for at least 143 seats worth of gate fees, regardless of what the actual plane is, to incentivize carriers to run full-size mainline aircraft only.

There is a tiny demand for commercial air service in smaller cities. Very few people would actually miss the service if it [service to all airports without any mainline service] just disappeared tomorrow, and a few more mainline flights were scheduled to make up for it.

My proposals are perfectly realistic. Since a tiny minority of people fly on regional-only routes, few people would miss regional service, and the vast majority of passengers would see more mainline service on bigger planes with fewer delays. I'm not sure that there's anywhere in the CONUS that doesn't currently have commercial mainline service except Michigan off-season and parts of Eastern Maine. WN has a massive black hole in North Dakota and Montana, but DL has mainline to Fargo and Bismark, ND, as well as Billings, MT. MI has mainline service to TVC (seasonal), and Green Bay Wisconsin. TVC could use year-round mainline service, Bangor, ME could use mainline service, it definitely has the runway to support it. A few other minor tweaks would be needed here and there.

There's clearly an in-between where it's not really economical to efficiently provide mainline service (13 737's a day), but the demand is there where a flight or two to each of a couple of hubs can be operated at higher costs. That model is OK, as long as people are willing to pay the big coin, as it doesn't congest the hubs when one of two A319s or A320s drops in from almost-BFE. However, those locations also have a lot of regional service, which should be consolidated into a couple of mainline flights. If there's two A319 flights a day from that airport, then that's what there is.

I will absolutely NOT fly on any regional airline out of principle, whether it is on a mainline route or not. NO exceptions. If I am going to buy Delta tickets, I want Delta tickets, not some rinky-dink airline flying rinky-dink planes. That's why, unless I can't find a low fare on flysouthwest.com, I just use Southwest for all my CONUS flying. I used DL once because they had cheaper tickets JFK-SEA than WN did BDL-SEA or PVD-SEA at the time, and since I wouldn't have to pay for parking. It kinda sucked. Now WN is cheaper anyway.

BiggAW

There is lots of mainline service available in fly-over country. In fact, I want to see more of the US, and I plan to do so in the future, including "fly-over country". Flying mainline or taking Amtrak or driving. I wouldn't do a coast-to-coast road trip, but Amtrak would be a possibility with a few stops and mini-road-trips on the way.

They don't serve HNL, but that's mainline anyway, since it's ETOPS territory and way out of the range of regional jets anyway. But where in the CONUS do you go that doesn't have WN service?

The real question is whether I care. FedEX and UPS fly their own jets to where they are needed, and Z trains handle a lot of the load too. Heck, I'd be happy if they routed everything via Z train and trucked the rest of the way. If they did a decent job at it, even stuff coming to the east coast from Cali would spend a day on each end, plus 2 days in transit running on non-stop Z trains and highway trucking. Even if you lose another day in there somewhere, it's not too bad. Heck, that's probably what they do already with most things, that's why the Z trains are there. The USPS, OTOH, I don't expect anything to get anywhere in a timely fashion. It's the USPS. Slow and [usually] reliable.

gooselee

This wouldn't work, as OP apparently has all the time in the world to drive several hours to fly on the equipment he/she wants. Good for OP.

For the rest of us, we need regional airports that are often served by smaller planes and airlines other than WN.

(Note: I actually don't mind WN when their price/schedule works for me. Or at least, I didn't before this thread. )

kettle1

Let me put a few places that I flew or my staff flew over the past few months that WN does not serve: PSP, BIL, BZN, COD, FAR, GJT, SUN, JAC, LWS, GCC, MSN, ANC, CVG, HLN, MED, IAD. That is just a fraction of the cities. How about Tyler, Texas and Wichita Falls, TX.

Not to mention my home in HNL or a visit to OGG and many International spots. My former home was in TPE.

WN is a fine carrier, but they mainly serve kettles and that is great. Like I said, time is money and WN overall does not work for me or my staff. For you, WN sounds great. WN works for me from LAS as it is the #2 hub for WN.

OP: Do you use the US Postal system? It works, thanks to airlines - including WN. UPS and Fed EX do not deliver to certain areas of the USA - the US post office does. They deliver to every address in the USA even in small towns that the OP says does not deserve air service. I can send a letter to Key West, FL from LAS and it usually arrives within 2 days. That is for less than 50 cents - thanks to airlines flying small planes and serving small places.

Safe travels.