How safe are smallish NW cities?
 

I tend to use NW to get around the upper Midwest to places that many people would need a detailed atlas and some time to find.

Goldman Sachs got the prediction of $100 oil right and is now predicting $200 oil. Airline consultants are on record saying that the RJs have priced themselves out of the market and that even for the turboprops the only way to fly small planes around anymore is by asking very high ticket prices. Much higher than now, and higher than the market will bear in many small cities. Those ticket prices are now somewhat subsidized by MSP captive passengers. The NW hub and spoke model has offered to me better prices flying into Podunk city from AMS, then into MSP alone. This gap seems to be narrowing however and even reversing at times.

At the same time in the news we hear that in just the last few months commercial air service has been stopped altogether in at least 10 cities around the US with more cities expected to be dropped.

How safe are the smallish NW cities that are now simply doing their 1-4 back & forth trips to the MSP hub? As NW continues to make cuts in capacity, will we see cities being dropped altogether? What cities might be in danger?

Might be safe
 

It's my little ole opinion that we'll probably see a reduction in the number of flights in/out of these cities and they'll be trying to get the E75s on the routes as from what I've heard they are quite the fuel-sippers. I don't know how many more they are putting into the fleet, but they have to do something as they get rid of the DC-9s.

I'm in the same boat as you, I'm based in Chicago, and oddly enough, it is cheaper to fly NW around the upper Midwest for me. I usually end up flying via MDW, MEM or DTW, but I'm racking up as many segments before the merger. If they kill them, as has been discussed on FT, I'll be screwed. As it stands now, I've got 47 segments and just under 30K EQM this year. Not good...

I would say not safe. Many of thes esmaller cities have service because of federal goverment payments to airlines. If those payments don't even out increasing costs (and they most leikley don't) then losses mount on service to these cities.

If oil hits $200 a barrel then most of us won't be flying anymore anyway because the price of flying will be prohibitive. I read today that if oil hits that mark a gallon of gas will be $6.

I assume jet fuel won't be much less. How will airlines operates with those economics?

If you're in a small town with once a day Saab service I'd be worried. I would expect a certain amount of consolidation to happen in the rural regions of the midwest. It could end up working well for cities like Grand Forks, but not so much for small airports within a couple hours drive.

On the flip side, one of the reasons I fly EAU-MSP instead of drive it is by the time I factor in gas, the price difference is worth it in most cases. So if the price difference goes up, that will be mitigated by my drive price going up as well.

But amount of air travel in general is going to go down, so as inventory reduces, airports with little inventory will see inventory->0.

In my area, NW is just about to start it's EAS from IMT and ESC to MSP / DTW on June 5th. I was just at one of these airports the other day and the new NW self check in kiosks are in, so it doesn't look like there is any change coming in the meantime. Appears that we will be getting a 340 turboprop here with hopes of a CRJ or even a Dreamliner in the future.

Ok, we'll settle for something small just as long as it has FC.

See, I would argue that because the federal government subsidizes flights to small markets, they are that much more likely to survive. Congress has shown an unreasonable willingness to subsidize both the airlines and small markets in the past, and we all know, that to our lovely government, a few extra billions spent is barely even noticeable.

Reduction of service may come with the merger though, simply because DL has no current connection with these markets, and will be far more ready to chop them, IMO.

(Just another reason to write to your lawmakers about this god-awful union).

not very. YMMV.

The NYT had an article today about service to smaller cities being reduced.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/bu...ei=5087%0A

Sadly the examples were not well picked. I can't really sympathize with small cities in DE and MD not having commercial service any more when all they have do now is drive a bit to other airports in the WAS area. :)

It's pretty clear there will be service reductions across the board. Small cities will certainly be impacted.

While there are multiple reasons for the rising price of oil, many beyond our control, we also have to admit that American fascination with automotive horsepower and size has magnified the problem.

I hope ABR doesn't get the axe, as the alternative is a five-hour drive west from MSP to visit family. I'd rather connect, fly a Saab and drive an hour than make a long-haul drive from the Cities at $4.00 plus a gallon.

IMO "not only is the game less fun than it used to be," it's ending completely.

I won't argue with you there...

poof

I don't know.

I can also see that the DC9s are retired even faster than planned, and the CRJ9 and E75s are used to fill those routes (with less capacity) and there still isn't a better options for "smaller" markets than the crj200 so we see some of those cites cut all together.

I'd imagine the smaller cities are pretty safe since NW has an effective monopoly on airfares out of them; the only ceiling on fares is the substitution cost of driving + a flight out of a hub, which in captive markets will be quite high (since driving is also more expensive and hub fares aren't that much cheaper than flying out of the TUPs of the world).

The cities where NW(+DL) competes with 1-2 other carriers and has further flights to their hubs than competitors are probably more at risk than the smaller markets; why compete out of places like SCE or ABE or SHV when your costs to fly there are higher than the competition, particularly for domestic only traffic? How many pax a day really do SHV-hub-int'l versus SHV-hub-[low-yield-domestic-destination]? Why not just concede that market to AA and CO, who probably can fly the hub route cheaper, and concentrate on markets where you have a captive audience or a better chance at getting premium pax?