Tuscaloosa airport recruiting Delta, SkyWest
Aug 15, 2019, 6:37 pm
#16
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 6,334
lol; back to the future ...
Southern (merged with North Central ~1979 to become Republic, which was acquired by Northwest ~1986, which was acquired by Delta ~2008) flew TCL-ATL with the venerable Martin 404
Southern (merged with North Central ~1979 to become Republic, which was acquired by Northwest ~1986, which was acquired by Delta ~2008) flew TCL-ATL with the venerable Martin 404
Aug 15, 2019, 7:09 pm
#17
formerly jackvogt
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: Atlanta, GA
Programs: Delta SkyMiles,
Posts: 822
Hmm...I can't see this working for residents of Atlanta. By the time you drive to the airport, park, check in, security, etc you could have driven. Connecting traffic....honestly I would not pay a premium for that. Birmingham is close, and it's not THAT far from Atlanta (I am speaking as someone who will often take 12 hr road trips). And you can bet it would be very expensive to fly there. Also CRJ 200. I think a lot of small towns will say "I deserve major airline service from my airport" but it rarely can support it. We shall see. Delta doesn't seem the type experiment with new routes.
Aug 15, 2019, 8:05 pm
#18
Join Date: Jun 2012
Posts: 139
Aug 15, 2019, 9:52 pm
#19
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: DFW
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Posts: 466
Remember that Delta itself doesn't have much to do with this decision. They will just sell the ticket. The city, SkyWest, and the government, through the EAS program are the ones to make a deal. If the government agrees to fund it, SkyWest will bid for it and probably get it. SkyWest loves doing EAS routes and has the crews and planes to do it. They’ve taken over quite a few EAS cities over the last couple of years from other airlines like Great Lakes, which shutdown last year. In the end, SkyWest will be the one that gets the subsidy.
Meridian, MS use to have service to ATL as well. But they’ve had service to both ORD and DFW as American Eagle for a few years now too, with a stop in Hattiesburg. SkyWest picked this up too.
Meridian, MS use to have service to ATL as well. But they’ve had service to both ORD and DFW as American Eagle for a few years now too, with a stop in Hattiesburg. SkyWest picked this up too.
Aug 16, 2019, 5:43 am
#20
Join Date: May 2011
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Somewhat relevant - I saw a Facebook ad for this website the other day. Yes, it's real.
Aug 16, 2019, 6:17 am
#21
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Mar 2019
Posts: 17,972
This is a tough one. It would be great for the airport to have flights, and the population warrants it, but Birmingham has a nice airport that is growing fast with 15% year over year traffic growth. I have been out to the Tuscaloosa airport a few times and it looks like it would need a good sized investment in order to handle commercial flights. Seems like a bit of a waste for 1-2 flights per day.
Aug 16, 2019, 11:52 am
#22
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: ATL
Programs: SPG, DL
Posts: 307
Hmm...I can't see this working for residents of Atlanta. By the time you drive to the airport, park, check in, security, etc you could have driven. Connecting traffic....honestly I would not pay a premium for that. Birmingham is close, and it's not THAT far from Atlanta (I am speaking as someone who will often take 12 hr road trips). And you can bet it would be very expensive to fly there. Also CRJ 200. I think a lot of small towns will say "I deserve major airline service from my airport" but it rarely can support it. We shall see. Delta doesn't seem the type experiment with new routes.
Aug 16, 2019, 12:25 pm
#23
formerly jackvogt
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: Atlanta, GA
Programs: Delta SkyMiles,
Posts: 822
As someone who often flies to smaller towns around the Southeast from ATL, I find a 3 hour drive to be the inflection point. Anything 4 or over I will almost always fly. Two or under I will always drive. More often than not, I would probably fly to Tuscaloosa than drive. But everyone has different tolerances (e.g. I don't feel any need to arrive at ATL more than 45 min before a flight).
Aug 16, 2019, 2:19 pm
#24
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Isn't the football stadium in Birmingham? Birmingham would have more hotel space too and IME the drive from BHM isn't bad at all. [I went to a game there once, and it was definitely not in Tuscaloosa--it was about an hour's drive from campus, in a residential area that was certainly urban.]
More importantly, Dreamland (ribs) is in Tuscaloosa and IIRC there's a big auto assembly plant (Mercedes) that would generate a lot of business travel. However, I assume that the market is much smaller than Huntsville (and its high prices), even under optimistic projections.
Is $750,000 enough to attract DL with a guarantee and how we know that the city/airport/whatever isn't going for WN instead? OTOH, if international business travel is part of the motivation, DL would be the obvious choice and probably the carrier that folks are already using.
More importantly, Dreamland (ribs) is in Tuscaloosa and IIRC there's a big auto assembly plant (Mercedes) that would generate a lot of business travel. However, I assume that the market is much smaller than Huntsville (and its high prices), even under optimistic projections.
Is $750,000 enough to attract DL with a guarantee and how we know that the city/airport/whatever isn't going for WN instead? OTOH, if international business travel is part of the motivation, DL would be the obvious choice and probably the carrier that folks are already using.
Aug 16, 2019, 3:27 pm
#25
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lol; back to the future ...
Southern (merged with North Central ~1979 to become Republic, which was acquired by Northwest ~1986, which was acquired by Delta ~2008) flew TCL-ATL with the venerable Martin 404
Southern (merged with North Central ~1979 to become Republic, which was acquired by Northwest ~1986, which was acquired by Delta ~2008) flew TCL-ATL with the venerable Martin 404
They could do what UA used to do with ABE. Set up a schedule then cancel the flights regularly and bus them to EWR. DL could bus them from TCL to BHM.
Aug 16, 2019, 3:48 pm
#27
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The funny thing is that Bryant-Denny is the eighth largest stadium in the world and three of those bigger are SEC stadiums.
Aug 16, 2019, 3:57 pm
#28
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Michigan and Penn State must be among the truly large ones, maybe ("the") Ohio State and USC too.
Aug 16, 2019, 3:58 pm
#29
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that was actually a CO ploy, long before the UA merger ... their schedules showed connecting service to ABE using a 4-digit "flight" number out of EWR (I want to say it was 84xx, and they actually gave the 500-mile minimum segment credit); somewhere buried in the fine print was a notation about "Express motor coach service from Newark to Allentown" ... iirc the bus used the C gate (71?) along with the airside shuttle to/from the CO Express gates in A
Aug 16, 2019, 4:02 pm
#30
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