MAH4546

Miami is a massive local market from Stockholm and Oslo, though.

GUWonder

Large in a way indeed. But much the same could be said about the NYC metro area being a massive local market from the DC metro area and vv too. And yet the amount of plane seats available between DC and NYC is below its historical peak even as the economy has been humming for years since the boost during the Obama-Biden years. Sure taking a train or bus or car doesn’t work for OSL/ARN-MIA, but the point is that massive demand doesn’t necessarily mean that an airline won’t reduce capacity in some ways even with massive demand.

CPH-Flyer

Number of seats may be down, but what about passenger numbers NYC to DC? Historical peak in seats may just have been over capacity.

GUWonder

Historical peak in passengers flown on a route can be viewed alternatively — and even simultaneously — as any, some or all of the airlines operating a given city pair at a given time as being at capacity, under capacity or over-capacity, so I’m just going to say that any discussion about what is “over-capacity” is beside the point when the point is this: even with massive passenger volumes — going by various routes and means — between a city pair, airlines can still end up cutting back on seat capacity on a given city pair or set of city pairs to lower the number of seats available to well below the number of seats sold previously.

CPH-Flyer

Of course airlines can cut seats in very big markets. But the more detailed reasons behind it are more interesting than the cut itself. The base reason is that they are not making money despite the passenger potential, or that the aircraft can make more money deployed elsewhere. Overcapacity in a market is often a trigger for a less than stellar financial performance of a route.

So for the Miami market, the question is what people are willing to pay to fly direct.

GUWonder

The question is what happens to SK’s annual ARN-MIA and OSL-MIA seat capacity — in an era where SK has A321LRs, especially when it’s on the heel of Norwegian cutting its Scandinavia-Florida service.

CPH-Flyer

Nothing much will happen in terms of the A321LR and the ARN-MIA flights, it is beyond the range capability of the A321LR. The A321XLR can probably do it.

GUWonder

The range capabilities of part of the fleet being below the range capabilities of other parts of the fleet doesn’t preclude adjustments to routes and capacity on routes that become possible with a more complex fleet mix or that take place for other reasons.

copperred

Amtrak ate that market, or much of it. There's little point in flying between DC and NYC most of the time. Better to take the Northeast Regional (get off right at EWR if you want) and stay the night if need be than deal with the NYC airports.

GUWonder

If you want to sleep at home in one city for the night before and after being in the other city for just the 9-5 working hours, Amtrak doesn’t work as well as flying even as Amtrak is a useful part of the mix for all the times when flying becomes unreliable on the route.

Government-owned (and government-subsidized) Amtrak indeed did eat more of the market after the government bought into the notion of “federalize to professionalize” (airport security screening) and kept coming up with new and additional “security” rules for the airlines and for passengers, thus boosting Amtrak even more at the expense of the airlines serving the market. Add in the higher jet fuel prices and some other things the airlines did, and Amtrak was the major beneficiary along with some bus operators of this stuff. But this is all beside the point, with the point being that high demand for travel between a city pair (regardless of means of travel) doesn’t necessarily mean that airlines won’t engage in “capacity discipline” and thereby hike up prices charged to consumers for the city pair.

CPH-Flyer

I looked at Amtrak, and the time they take to get from central NYC to Central DC. Do they still have horses pulling those trains? I'd be surprised if that gains many business travellers, it just takes too long. I know there is quite the hassle of TSA, and you need to go to the airports, but unless you live in the center of New York or DC, you would also need to go to these stations.

highupinthesky

After the airlines has started to squeeze so many seats into a bird that it's impossible to use your laptop during the flight, I'm actually starting to use trains from time to time so I can convert some of the travel time to work time.

GUWonder

The Amtrak Acela gets a lot of business travelers, including those whose billable rate is US$3000+/hour.

From NYC-Penn Station to the UWS of Manhattan is faster on the subway in evening rush hour than going by any ground means of transport from EWR, or JFK, or even LGA at the same time.

SJ trains to get between Stockholm and Malmo often sells out even as that service can too often be late or otherwise disrupted and the alternative of flying to get between the two cities is usually faster and not always more expensive than the train. And the SJ trains seem to have plenty of business travelers still.

Of course I am pretty sure that SAS doesn’t expect to have its A321LRs facing market share erosion from trains and road-hugging, wingless buses.

CPH-Flyer

I have taken the train from Stockholm to Copenhagen, volcanic ash incident.... Looking at the number of people that had to move seats a long the way, as Stockholm to Malmö was sold out, but Stockholm to middle of nowhere and middle of nowhere to Malmö each had open seats (or even broken in to multiple shifts) kind of made me assume that the X2000 more served people with O&D in between the two cities than people going the full stretch. But admittedly my samle size is small and old.

GUWonder

When the train tickets for Malmo to Stockholm travel are sold out, often it’s possible to buy something like Malmo-Jonkoping and then Jonkoping-Norrkoping and then Norrkoping-Stockholm or something like that. But then it often costs more and involves a seat shuffle. And sometimes even that is not possible.