tmiw

According to FlightAware, it's just Qantas and Virgin Australia flying BNE-PER. It's no surprise that you're going to have to pay a fair bit of money.

Meanwhile, I count five airlines flying LAX-JFK, both of which are hub airports. Prices are indeed lower due to the additional competition; Google Flights seems to show around $250-300ish in economy if you book far enough in advance. Also, there's presumably good enough loads to justify all five carriers' presence, which implies that people are generally okay with flying in/out/through hubs.

No one flies to Carlsbad now. And that's the main point I was trying to make--I don't think there's that much demand in the US for what you're suggesting. (Otherwise, United would still be flying to LAX and maybe a few other destinations too from there.)

OZFLYER86

We really only have 2 major airlines in OZ. Qantarse has Junkstar(Jetstar) as their low cost & Virgin has Tiger as their low cost. QF/VA decide when & where the LCCs fly to. Plus we only have 24 million people in an area almost the same as mainland USA (with a big bloody desert in the middle). What's USA mainland population ? 250 million ? Moxy only need a very small % to make it work.

westpac were low cost. Moxy is not trying to be low cost. They will be cheaper with last minute fares than the big boys(which is where the big boys make their money). They won't be competing with LCCs.

tmiw

That's like saying that since Australia has two airlines for 24 million people, a country with 240 million could easily support twenty airlines. Granted, I think there is room for another airline or two here, but I don't think point to point to various out of the way airports is a niche that will sustain them.

BTW the US population is currently 327 million.

OZFLYER86

someone said ......
Is McClellan-Palomar airport out of the way ? Wonder what the population within 30 mins drive would be & their average income ? What's the population of mainland USA ?

it seems from these A220 specs below, that an A220-100 could get in & out(just) of Carlsbad, maybe with some weight restriction, but think Moxy has ordered only the bigger A220-300, but that could change in a heartbeat, plus Moxy is probably not going to be all economy, so they might not even get close to MTOW.

Point being that this sort of airport, that couldn't handle a B737/A320 but maybe with a slightly longer runway, could handle an A220. Think of big boys only Delta has ordered the A220 & do they want another base in LA/San Diego basin ?

tmiw

1.5 million within a 25 mile radius of Carlsbad, CA. However, the southern edge of that circle is close enough to SAN that many will just go there instead. Reducing that circle to 15 miles reduces the population to 785,000 or so.

(Source for data.)

Also keep in mind that there's significant traffic on the major highways leading to it, which will be a factor too.

Sure, it could take off from there. However, the A220-100 has a 135 passenger max capacity. If California Pacific Airlines couldn't fill Embraer jets (~70 seat capacity), I'm not sure how Moxy would do any better with twice the seats to fill.

(The A220 also uses 2.81kg/km of fuel per flight, vs. 2.3kg/km for the E170. Which definitely isn't going to help if the loads aren't good enough.)

OZFLYER86

economies of scale for a start. So for 20% more fuel, get 50% more seats.

+ with 60 A220s Moxy would be considered a major in OZ. Virgin OZ only has 80 x 737s & quite a few of those do medium haul international. Qantarse has less at 75 x 737s but they also use some A330s for domestic trans-continental.

Who is CPA ? Where did they fly to ?

Is MOxy was to go into Carlsbad, they would surely start with 6-8 rotations a day to 2 or 3 ports.

84fiero

The fact is, we really only know some basics about Moxy's specific plans - which will no doubt morph over time. And I'm certain that Moxy has people with much more comprehensive market research data than any of us posting here possess. Which of course doesn't guarantee success but puts them farther along than us here in the peanut gallery.

Sure, everyone would love to have convenient, quick, easy, local flights to everywhere that they want to go - at affordable prices. But if wishes were fishes, we'd all have a fry. Every product and services carries with it trade-offs among various attributes including price. Though I think 99% of people don't care whether the airport structure is ugly or beautiful (personally I find the architecture in some terminals very aesthetically pleasing).

There are pros and cons to both the hub-and-spoke system and to point-to-point systems. Time will tell how Moxy will pan out, assuming it gets off the ground in the first place. I hope it does well and if it meets my needs for a given flight would certainly try it out...and if not, then life goes on.

OZFLYER86

think many have mis read Moxys announcements.

Some people seem to think they are going to offer cheaper fares than LCCs. Nope, no money in that. But think they might do a Jetblue & offer better deals to business types, with fares not booked a long way in advance. This is where it's easier to compete + major benefits of less congested airports.

In Australia, no security whatsoever is required, when aircraft is less than 20t MTOW, which includes all Saab 340s, ATR 42s, some 36 seater jets like EMB 135s, Dash 8-100, -200, -300, Dornier 328 turbo props & jets etc. Similar in New Zealand I think.

BearX220

The market, that's who. That's why they're spending ungody sums to expand LHR capacity while crickets chirp at Luton.

A tad premature given that Moxy does not even exist yet.

Again, the market begs to differ. A lot of entrepreneurs go out and tell the marketplace how wrong it is to want what it wants, and try to force people to choose something different. It rarely works.

Such companies have favored contract pricing with a "big boy" carrier. They don't pay last-minute civilian fares. If you don't think those big boys will make selective deals to defend that revenue channel and freeze Moxy out, just as they used price wars to run off PeoplExpress, Air Florida, Muse Air, Independence Air, Midway, SkyBus, the new National, Western Pacific, etc., etc. -- virtually all post-deregulation insurgent airlines in the US except America West and JetBlue -- well, sit back and watch the knife fight.

Not saying Moxy is dead before it starts. I'm saying Neeleman has to crack a heretofore uncracked code. Not only that, the last time he ran this play, with JetBlue in the late '90s, the barriers to entry in the NA airline market were a lot lower than today.

pinniped

So basically, Moxy is going to be a reboot of the 90's-era Midwest Express.

I will root for it - I would love to see it work. The logic of the old Midwest wasn't in rural or smalltown airports, but rather in finding business routes that weren't served by the majors. From MCI, I flew them to SAT, SEA, BOS, MKE, and both Southern and Northern California. The product was solid and the flights were filled mainly with business travelers paying medium-to-high coach fares. It worked in the economics of the 90's but didn't survive the post-2001 world for very long.

The problem with nearly every one of those routes I mentioned: in 2019, Southwest flies them all, whereas they didn't in the 1990s. WN's expansion in the past 20 years has filled in a lot of the gaps where a Midwest type player would have a niche. You could probably say the same about Jetblue in the east and Alaska in the west, although I'm less familiar with where they still have some gaps.

I'm having a hard time figuring out where some good Moxy routes would be, beyond ones that make the residents of Rockford really happy.

And they have to do one of two things: either change the name or form such a strong partnership with Marriott that LT Titanium members get automatic upgrades.

BearX220

That sounds like a very valid comparison, but ME as we knew it then would not work today in a virtual-cartel environment: no alliances / partnerships (although ME had one with NW toward the end), thin frequencies, Wall Street pressure to strip away "frivolous" amenities, etc.

WN in 2019 is a good business airline for the short-to-medium haul: frequent service, more point-to-point flights, no change fees / unused ticket value banked, usually fair value. JetBlue even 20 years after founding is not a good business airline: thin frequencies, low utility unless you live in NY or BOS, bad OTP, train wreck during irrops, no interlining / bookover when trouble hits. If Moxy Xeroxes the JetBlue schema and aims for the business market I don't see how it gets traction, no matter what airports it serves. Southwest as you say fulfills much of that demand with more choice and predictability,

84fiero

What specific press releases and statements regarding Moxy are you using as a reference point? I've seen numerous interviews, statements, and quotes from Neeleman about the proposed airline. Mostly rather vague, feel-good, pie-in-the-sky stuff (which isn't unusual at this stage). So I don't know how it is that anyone on the outside can have too great of certainty about Moxy's particulars.

Neeleman has a good track record and all, but even the best and brightest aren't a guaranteed success every single time. This is a tough industry, no matter how you slice it.

tmiw

Which only works if you can fill those seats. And history has shown that is fairly difficult (if not impossible), at least at CRQ.

Various destinations in CA, NV and AZ per Wikipedia. I only remember ever hearing about CRQ-SJC and CRQ-LAS, though.

IIRC CPA was only ever doing a few flights a day per destination.

OZFLYER86

History ? What history ? The only history is small aircraft up to 70 seaters to places like SJC & LAS. Has a 135 seater ever flown into CRQ ? Economies of scale & only a few flights per day. That will never attract business types.

Why would anyone go to SAN when they could fly out of Carlsbad ? Have driven SAN/LAX. 1.5 million relatively affluent Americans sounds like a decent base ? The range of an A220 would allow it to fly much further than CPA.

Heathrow must be one of the worlds worst airports from a pax perspective. Great for operator of the airport, due to economies of scale. Why would any business type heading for the city, fly into LHR, when they could fly into London City ? Cos only certain aircraft can get into LCY with certain range. No idea if an A220 can get into LCY, but the point is there are always options for the business traveller. Think all the examples you give above are airlines that flew the same aircraft as the big boys. Only Delta(of big boys) has ordered the A220 AFAIK. What if Moxy only flies to airports that can't take a B737/A319-20. Then it's only real competitor would be Delta & maybe they won't fly to Delta ports or maybe Delta wouldn't try to compete on price. I think Moxy will be cheaper than last minute fares on the big boys, which is where all airlines make the big bucks. LCCs make some, but business types don't fly LCCs in general.

just realised an A220 could easily go west coast USA to east coast USA nonstop & vice versa. That must open up a lot of routes, that the big boys force you to go through a hub to get to. Hubs add hours to any trip & potential delays are enormous.

Look at what the B787 & now a A350 has done to hub busting long haul.

The A380 is "dead"

tmiw

United flew there from LAX with EMB120 turboprops (~30 passengers) until they got rid of them earlier this decade. Assuming that such were going out full (which may or may not be a good assumption), that'd still be less than 50% load if they had used E170s instead, or 25% with A220s.

Now, a major airline might be able to subsidize such a route (even if it were just one or two turns a day/week) if they were to ever try service. I doubt a new one would have such flexibility, however, especially since business travelers value stuff like frequency and being able to still get home in an IRROPS situation.

At least for me, SAN is 10 minutes closer driving than CRQ. Not to mention that there are more airlines going to more places from the former (even if Moxy or another airline were to try service at the latter). It's similar to how flying internationally from LAX is still more cost effective in a lot of cases (e.g. SAN-LHR in economy is 2x the price on BA's direct flight compared to LAX-LHR on one of several carriers).

Another recent example: I flew SAN-SMF and went to the Redding area by car, a 2 hour drive from SMF. I could have flown SAN-SFO-RDD on UA instead and avoided the drive, but that ticket was $200ish round trip compared to the $100ish AS charged for SAN-SMF (WN was similar, IIRC). And we needed a car up there anyway. Now, would UA lower prices if someone else also served that route? Sure, but is there enough traffic to justify it without killing service entirely?

LHR (as well as most of the rest of London) has mass transit that's far better than in a lot of the US. And its location also permits long-haul flights to most anywhere in the world. Not sure it's a great comparison.