OWdevotee

One of the local papers here in North Texas is reporting a DFW airport official saying Virgin America has a 92% load factor on their flights in and out of the airport. Does that strike anyone else as a little high? I would be tremendously pleased for them if it were accurate, but it doesn't correspond with my personal experience on Virgin to and from CA.

If it is indeed correct, it leads me to wonder if there isn't more opportunity for Virgin here at DFW....



From the Star-Telegram:

DFW Airport passenger traffic up 3.3 percent for June, launches Foursquare and Facebook Places promos

About 5.3 million passengers traveled through Dallas/Fort Worth Airport in June, up 3.3 percent from the same time last year.

Airport executives attributed the summer traffic gain to new low-cost carriers, such as Virgin America and Spirit Airlines, now providing service out of DFW.

Low-cost carriers had 28.3 percent more passengers in June compared to June 2010 and Virgin America had load factors of 92 percent on its flights, said Luis Perez, vice president of air service development told the airport's board at its monthly meeting on Thursday.

grt2106

I wouldn't be totally suprised-

but remember how many incentives they've given...

2-for-1 flights, 20% off flights, 50% off via groupon from DFW, 15 eleVAte points per dollar spent...

VA is incredibly packing their planes right now... but how many people are they ACTUALLY turning profit on?

Eastbay1K

People are none-too-pleased with AA in these parts (SF Bay Area) - they have gutted the route system from here, and are tired of flying to/from DFW on MD80s. The capacity on Bay Area / DFW could have probably used VX's increase, and for O/D travel, I'd take them over AA.

707Flyer

Most recent DOT data had DFW-SFO loads in the 60s, but it's a couple months out of date.

N830MH

What is does this means? Can you try explain to me? I would like to know how is VX doing in DFW. Is that good loading? Is the flight is very full? Is that 100% load factor?

Slinger

It means every flight to and from DFW-SFO are 60% full.

707Flyer

May T-100s show VX's DFW-LAX/SFO loads increasing to 74% from 65% in April

Systemwide, a strong 81% LF for May

N830MH

That's pretty good. I'm sure they will try to beef up. To improvement the load factor will be completely 100 percent.

aviators99

I thought it meant the average, not the minimum?

Slinger

wait, you are correct aviators, it is the average. sorry

ByrdluvsAWACO

Is everyone here in denial? Load factors mean nothing if the yields are too low. VX just posted a 21 million dollar loss. Thats up 6 million from a year ago.

grt2106

It's exactly how I said it, not so difficult to fill planes if you're giving the seats away.

OWdevotee

In denial about what, exactly?? I don't think anyone here has been cheering the load factors and trumpeting them as representing a great and profitable achievement on the part of the airline, rather just discussing the percentage of butts in seats.

volvo99

Yet they still show their loyAAlty as the flights to DFW are always packed.

Your comments are less about VX entering the market and more about how FF programs inherently work against the consumer: by passing a few crumbs off the table the legacies receive huge data streams about your consuming habits, and protect against mass exodus to a shinier, newer product like VX. When you have substantial mileage built up with a carriers like AA, you are esentially trapped from trying a competitor despite the relatively poor hard product they are offering these days.

volvo99

Perhaps very little. The AAdvantage has so many DFW based fliers by the balls that their is little incentive to migrate to a newer, shinier competitor despite the sh*t sandwich AA's hard product has turned into.