Concord Regional Airport- what could it be in 10 years? (Charlotte: 2013, casino)
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Airports are a bit like commercial malls. You need a large anchor to draw smaller businesses. A small airline operating out of Concord or Gastonia can only offer limited service on a light schedule. They'd have to include shuttle service to CLT to make connections on larger carriers to draw more passengers.
In most of the USA, you can't have large airports less than 100 miles from each other. I remember visiting Melbourne Fla's airport about ten years ago. It was a nice airport but kind of sad to see as well. They'd closed some of their terminals and only Delta was still operating. Competing win the midst of Orlando, Jacksonville, and Miami was just too much.
It's different with a huge metro to serve. Most of the US is not Dallas, Chicago, New York with so many flights that overcapacity spills over into supporting airports.
Even large metros can have difficulty. When I lived in Southern California, the papers would run articles from time to time about the challenge of keeping LAX, Long Beach, Ontario, and John Wayne all profitable and balanced. Airlines wanted to be at LAX (maxed out) or JW (flight times and directions restricted). So they served the others not-so-willingly. If space opened up at the major airports, carriers would leave, and the smaller airports struggled again.
Even Fresno and Bakersfield struggled. They're isolated cities, reasonably large. But still close enough to San Jose and LAX that people were tempted to just drive and fly out.
I'd love to see regional travel (under 500 miles flights) from Concord. I absolutely dread it when work requires me to set foot in the CLT to board a plane.
I could see the Concord Regional Airport serving charter airlines that are now servicing Charlotte-Douglas. From what I understand, charter airlines are at the "mercy" of the primary airlines in terms of gate usage. If those gates need to be utilize, then the charter plane is bumped. My parents fly a lot on charter flights to casino locations and they have mentioned numerous times that their flight has been delayed from landing AND taking off because of heavy gate usage by the primary airline in question.
JFK, LaGuardia, & Newark are the exception. Even in Chicago, Midway just hangs on & doesn't put a dent in OHare.
The best example is that Trenton & Atlantic City can't put a dent in PHL in spite of many years of trying.
Dallas Lovefield, Houston Hobby & Chicago Midway. All 3 busy airports.... But.... There's a reason... SouthWest. WN (SouthWest) spent years building up operations in these secondary airports because @ the time they didn't fly to large airports. So they've been built up to even Chicago Midway having ~350 flights which can't be shifted to O'Hare and LoveField & Hobby are working fine.
Your Trenton & Atlantic City were perfect apples to apples analogies (with NYC, Chicago, Etc being apples to oranges. We aren't NYC lol). Even then ... Concord is no Atlantic City.
Concord will never have more than 3 daily flights by commercial airlines daily.
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlotte485
Dallas Lovefield, Houston Hobby & Chicago Midway. All 3 busy airports.... But.... There's a reason... SouthWest. WN (SouthWest) spent years building up operations in these secondary airports because @ the time they didn't fly to large airports. So they've been built up to even Chicago Midway having ~350 flights which can't be shifted to O'Hare and LoveField & Hobby are working fine.
Your Trenton & Atlantic City were perfect apples to apples analogies (with NYC, Chicago, Etc being apples to oranges. We aren't NYC lol). Even then ... Concord is no Atlantic City.
Concord will never have more than 3 daily flights by commercial airlines daily.
That's why my first post in this thread compared it to Trenton. It's not meant as a slam to Concord. It's too close to CLT & between CLT & the Triad airport. Good for them that they have something going on, but it won't snowball.
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