guv1976

Change will take effect January 9, 2023; bookable now. Service will be on twice daily CR9's.

https://flyithaca.com/2022/10/ithaca...ional-airport/

"Ithaca Tompkins International Airport Now [sic] Offering Air Service to John F. Kennedy International Airport"

(Although the release does not explicitly state that ITH-DTW nonstop service is ending, is does refer to a "shift" in service. And for travel on or after January 9, the Delta app shows only connections via JFK for ITH-DTW.)

mersk862

BGM-DTW is also moving to BGM-LGA on that date, also going to 2x CR9 (from a daily CRJ).

jrl767

saw this last night in the “Final 20 CRJ-200s” thread

ryw

Interesting! (Though I think you mean 2023, not 2013 ). Is UA still flying ITH-EWR, or only to IAD? (That seems to change every couple years). Given that the major competition to New York is just a variety of bus services, I've been surprised that there hasn't been more ITH-NYC flight options.

JFK probably makes a better connection point for international students/travelers from Europe than DTW in terms of the number of flight options. Though this perhaps makes it more difficult for connections to secondary western cities or Asia. I'm sad to see the draw down of DTW flights though, I think it's a much easier airport to connect in than JFK, especially when you came in on a regional flight at the far end of the B gates!

DLASflyer

The gutting of core hubs continues in favor of coastal slot squatting.

guv1976

Oops! Correction made.

UA ended ITH-IAD when it started ITH-EWR. So come January, the only scheduled flights out of ITH will be to the Metro NYC area.

In addition to having students from Europe and Asia, Cornell does have a fair number of students from South America, so ITH-JFK-GRU will be possible.

MSPeconomist

In the past, DL flew DTW-GRU nonstop. Other South American destinations use ATL connections on DL, although some partner flights would depart from JFK.

Students flying to/from their home countries would occur at most a couple times per year, on dates that are highly concentrated around the beginning and end of semesters, plus possibly spring break. Two CRJ-900 flights per day during the week around the start/end of a semester would be less than 1400 foreign students, which is only a fraction of Cornell's foreign student population and of course doesn't include foreign postdocs and faculty who generally are somewhat older, but often try to return to their home countries annually.

A bigger chunk of ITH passengers would probably consist of Cornell and other university faculty (plus postdocs and graduate students) flying in and out of Ithaca for conferences, seminar presentations, and collaborations. Some alums (and parents of students) would fly into ITH for various events, but many would drive instead since many of them live in New York and other northeastern states.

mersk862

Slot squatting is a big part of this, but there is a much bigger picture here.

The pilot shortage is getting really acute now, and it's 50% or so longer to go from these cities to DTW vs NYC (double for ITH/BGM). I know it's not as simple that just because a flight is half the distance does not mean it takes half the time, but there is an hours saving in there.

From a network standpoint, these cities were all getting once daily service (normally departing the outstation around 5 pm) - not the most conducive to service. In ITH, you've got UA running twice a day to EWR, SCE you've got multiple frequencies on UA and AA to PHL/EWR/ORD with multiple frequencies. Now you can offer 2x/day service (much more appealing for travelers to use these airports now versus driving to SYR/MDT) and a lot of the traffic is staying on the East Coast (hint - a lot of it is going to Florida). Add in the fact that at LGA, you've had slots open up for a combination of quite a few things - New York City is still under 50% office space being used, which means business travel is down, so a market like LGA-BHM that was 2x/day pre-Covid is down to 1x/day, plus a lot of upgauging going on with the A220 now being used quite a bit (45% capacity increase over a 175/CR9) and a lot of A321s taking over from 738s/320s (especially on Florida routes) - that's a 20% increase in capacity there, so you've got increased seats to fill. Layer in that Delta has a brand new terminal that it wants to start recouping its investment and it all adds up to making it much more commercially appealing to Delta as a company to route more traffic over LaGuardia vs Detroit. As I said on another site, yeah it's not appealing that you can't go on Delta from these cities to California without switching airports or making an additional stop, but the truth is Delta wasn't really getting that traffic as it is today, and if they were, it was either you were a Delta loyalist that would tolerate the inconvenient schedule, or you were spill traffic from more attractive UA/AA schedules. Going twice a day service and offering multiple convenient options to where people want to travel (which is a lot up and down the East Coast) makes Delta a much stronger carrier in these markets.

coke cans and winglets

This is probably a huge part of it. I don’t think them talking about restoring core hubs really applies here as much as the regional pilot shortage does. DTW’s regional network is in shambles because SkyWest is in shambles and has barely any pilots. This isn’t unique to Delta, look at all of United’s regional cuts lately. They’ve been hit far worse than Delta in terms of losing service to small markets but there’s a common theme, all of them are operated by SkyWest. By shifting SCE/BGM/ITH to NYC instead of DTW, this allows them to transfer their service over to Endeavor who has the ability to do that right now. If SkyWest weren’t in the trenches like they are right now then DTW would be looking a lot different.

guv1976

Some local reaction to this development can be found on ITH's Facebook page:

https://m.facebook.com/flyithaca

ericcheung

This is probably aimed for NYC based companies recruiting at Cornell. The LGA-ITH flight when US ran it was popular with the banks. I recall one completely full flight on a Dash-8 where the pilot was surprised there were no checked bags. It was all company reps there for a evening reception and heading back to the office.

guv1976

Unfortunately, there is no LGA-ITH flight: it's JFK-ITH. (BGM is getting LGA service.)

SSF556

Detroit is going to continue to take hits.

I used to be able to find reasonable flights out of GSP to DTW and then to ORD.

Now the most economical option is LGA…

jrl767

and this is relevant to ITH how?

I’m perfectly happy to route SEA-JFK-ITH for the extra miles (plus, of course, the possibility of D1 on the TCON), and I won’t be at all surprised if DCA/IAD-ITH will price out better via JFK than DTW

but all that said, I’m not fixated on transiting Tompkins County Intl, and both AA and DL have decent SYR/ROC options

MSPeconomist

It depends. If you'll be renting a car, it's convenient to fly into SYR on mainline or at a convenient time and even ROC for a somewhat farther drive (with other airports being creative potential solutions). However, if you don't really need the car and your hotel (such as the Statler) provides shuttle service to/from ITH, it's nice to fly into ITH.