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Apparently Columbia's airport hasn't fallen off the face of the earth yet. Maybe the two airlines will try to outdo each other in affordability for Columbia-to-New York travelers.
Apparently Columbia's airport hasn't fallen off the face of the earth yet. Maybe the two airlines will try to outdo each other in affordability for Columbia-to-New York travelers.
Huh??? you mean US Airways was NOT offering this flight before??? I am surprised that they were not already doing this....They have direct flights already to DC, Pittsburgh, and I believe Philly. I would have thought Delta would have been the newby given that their hubs are in ATL and CVG. Oh well, better late than never
US Airways major "focus city" (i.e., not a large connecting hub like Charlotte/Atlanta but with some connecting flights) in the Northeast Corridor has historically been Washington National Airport (their headquarters prior to the America West merger was in Arlington, VA right next door). Its major hub in the corridor is Philadelphia, so it has flights there, too. I guess between flights from Columbia to Charlotte, Washington, and Philly, they figured offered enough opportunities to connect to LaGuardia for anyone wanting to use US Airways (since Delta already covered the non-stop route).
I'm pretty sure they no longer fly to Pittsburgh - that was a former hub that has been downsized to a small focus city at best. It's similar to what American did at Raleigh, Nashville, & St. Louis, and what Delta will possibly do to Cincinnati with the nearby but much bigger Detroit hub they acquired with the Northwest merger. Mid-size metros in the 1-3 million population range can't seem to sustain major hub operations any more (Charlotte may be the exception, as it's the only plausible alternative to Atlanta).
Delta has a major presence in the New York area, partially from its acquisition of Pan Am assets in the early 1990s, and so has a focus city at New York-LaGuardia (hence the non-stop flights from non-hub cities like Columbia, along with the former Pan Am Shuttle to DC & Boston) and a big European gateway at New York-Kennedy.
Part of this new US Airways service to LaGuardia may be fallout from a failed attempt by Delta and US Airways to execute a "swap" of take-off/landing slots at LaGuardia and National. They tried to do so in order to consolidate their strong bases at those airports, respectively (i.e., Delta wants to consolidate and win the New York market, and US Airways wants to focus more on its profitable Washington-National base). However, the FAA attached strings to the deal by making the carriers divest a bunch of slots in the name of competition (i.e., give it to some Low-Cost Carriers like AirTran, Spirit, jetBlue, etc.), but in a way that Delta & US Airways didn't like. So the deal's been off and the carriers are now suing the FAA.
So now US Airways may be saying - ok, we're stuck with these LaGuardia slots we were trying to get rid of - what profitable routes can we use them for? Columbia-LaGuardia is a fairly sure-fire bet to make money.
Fares from Columbia to NYC have now dropped and are lower than fares from Charlotte in some instances. It's amazing what a little competition does for the market.
Fares for Columbia-to-NYC flights drop - In The Loop - TheState.com (http://www.thestate.com/2010/08/18/1422567/fares-for-columbia-to-nyc-flights.html - broken link)
Im actually flying in to CAE in September. I havent flown in/out of there in a while some Im looking forward to seeing the experience.. .Its a direct flight from DCA which is always nice....
Incidentally, I was over in the Pee Dee Region and noticed the Marlboro Cty and I believe Darlington Cty -Hartsville(SC)- call their airports.. jetports....WTF is up with that??? I guess you can call it what you like but 'jetport' sounds so 20th century...lol..
Im actually flying in to CAE in September. I havent flown in/out of there in a while some Im looking forward to seeing the experience.. .Its a direct flight from DCA which is always nice....
Incidentally, I was over in the Pee Dee Region and noticed the Marlboro Cty and I believe Darlington Cty -Hartsville(SC)- call their airports.. jetports....WTF is up with that??? I guess you can call it what you like but 'jetport' sounds so 20th century...lol..
A direct flight to DC is always great - especially since a connecting itinerary might take so long you might as well drive up at that point (or face the specter of hoofing it through long concourses for a tight connection in Charlotte or worse, Atlanta).
Airport names are often marketing exercises. For example, Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport and Charleston International Airport don't have any international flights, at least not scheduled ones, but they do have customs/immigration inspection facilities in case a charter, cargo, or private international flight arrives. However, CAE has customs/immigration capabilities, too, yet it did not decide to use "International" in its name.
"Jetport" obviously makes an airport sound sexier, but in reality those airports probably use that term to show that it can land at least a small business jet, such as a LearJet, or possibly a larger one such as a Gulfstream. I don't think they are trying to pretend they can land a large jet airliner or something (they can't and they know it). In these less-than-urban counties, it differentiates them from other areas of the state that have shorter airstrips that can't land anything more than a single-engine Cessna/Piper/etc. or perhaps a small turboprop. I agree that "Jetport" sounds very mid-20th-century, like when the Boeing 707 came out or something.
GSP International Airport does have regular direct foreign flight activity thanks to BMW Manufacturing and presumably other manufacturing businesses with local operations.
GSP International Airport does have regular direct foreign flight activity thanks to BMW Manufacturing and presumably other manufacturing businesses with local operations.
You are probably referring to charter/corporate jet flights and not scheduled ones. That being said, the addition of the term "international" to GSP's name roughly coincides with both the launching of BMW's manufacturing operations and the lengthening of the runway to 9,000 feet, which happened in the mid-1990s, so to that extent you are right.
I will say that GSP's runway is now long enough to handle overseas wide-body cargo flights (that's what at least one of the intents of the lengthening was, at least), although I've heard that foreign flight activity is not nearly as frequent enough to necessarily justify its current 11,000-foot length. That being said, it is a great asset for the region and is a crown jewel of the upstate.
As an aside, I will say that although I much prefer the newer, more modern airport terminal at CAE, I like the overall airfield layout at GSP because it feels much "cleaner" compared to the slightly more cluttered development at CAE outside the newer terminal core. This is partially because the powers-that-be that govern GSP (read, especially Mr. Milliken) wanted to maintain GSP as a higher-end commerical service airport and not develop too many facilities for "lesser" general aviation activity, and leave that market segment largely to the two downtown airports in Greenville and Spartanburg. I'd be curious to see plans and renderings of the GSP terminal expansion just announced.
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