Airport traffic up again (Pittsburgh, Delta: luxury, health, best)

[gg]

Good if they fly to EWR. That would be a cheaper connection to the Apple. Hope it works out. It probably will.

[Geeo]

Color me skeptical, but why would anyone in their right mind try and launch an airline these days? It's such a cut throat business, demand is down, fuel prices are high, and Newark is very congested. I wish them luck.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Geeo

Color me skeptical, but why would anyone in their right mind try and launch an airline these days? It's such a cut throat business, demand is down, fuel prices are high, and Newark is very congested. I wish them luck.

I think the argument would be that rapid consolidation and the financial troubles of the largest carriers has led to unfilled market opportunities.

I can see the argument that far--the question is what happens when a discount airline draws attention to a viable market opportunity (historically the large carriers will then step in and try to take it away).

[gg]

Originally Posted by Geeo

Color me skeptical, but why would anyone in their right mind try and launch an airline these days? It's such a cut throat business, demand is down, fuel prices are high, and Newark is very congested. I wish them luck.

Newark is busy, but PIT is dead. Hope they do well in our marketplace. We need anything that comes our way, that is for sure.

[Geeo]

I'd be interested to see, and I don't think the story mentions, if these are point-to-point routes between all the cities mentioned or are they all to be funneled through Newark? Or Pittsburgh?

[gg]

After PIT lost over 7,000 jobs and when PIT serviced over 21 million people, how are we doing compared to that today? I am reading we only service 8 million now? If so, OUCH!

[Geeo]

I think it was 8.2 million last year, which was up over the prior year. All the passengers at Pittsburgh are now O&D passengers with their origin or destination here. I saw on the Charlotte forum that only 20% of their passengers are O&D and 80% are simply transfering, much like PIT used to be. They are a little nervous about a possible USAir merger with Delta, which would eliminate them as a hub as well.

There are a lot of cities that are doing well not being airline hubs. It's a very fickle business. I can think of Austin, San Antonio, Indianapolis, Columbus, Richmond, Raleigh, Portland, San Jose, Tampa, Des Moines. Ironically, Pittsburgh's economy is better now than when it was a hub, and Charlotte's is doing terrible and it is a hub. Not that there's any correlation at all, just interesting to note.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Geeo

I'd be interested to see, and I don't think the story mentions, if these are point-to-point routes between all the cities mentioned or are they all to be funneled through Newark? Or Pittsburgh?

The only relevant tidbit I saw was calling Pittsburgh a "focus city", and as I understand that term, that just means they intend to have a lot of non-stops out of Pittsburgh, not that Pittsburgh would act as a hub for connecting flights.

So at a guess, they are not really going to be using a hub system per se, but they also may at least start mostly with routes from Newark, Pittsburgh, and maybe Newport News to the other places, and not so much between the other places.

[LIRefugee]

One intriguing stat I noticed recently on RITA is that Pittsburgh is now a busier airport in terms of passenger numbers than Cincinnati, still a Delta hub, though a highly shrunken one. Therefore, Pittsburgh's O&D numbers exceed all of the O&D AND transiting passengers in Cincinnati. The number of flights and amount of freight was higher in Cincinnati, but in number of people, Pittsburgh was higher. That implies that, all other economic factors aside, Pittsburgh would be a decent place to start a small hub or focus city operation.

PeoplExpress will likely test the waters (assuming they are able to start up at all) at Newport News and Pittsburgh and try to work out the operation that works best, if any works at all. But, the airline industry is a cutthroat one with difficult profit margins and unpredictable oil prices, so they have their work cut out for them.

[gg]

Originally Posted by Geeo

I think it was 8.2 million last year, which was up over the prior year.

Wow, how sad. I was just talking to my hair stylist and he is going down to Jacksonville, FL. He said his best option was to fly to Chicago and then to Jacksonville. 6 hours! What a difference from the days of over 20 million people rolling through PIT. Now 8! 8 Million? Oh my goodness, we shouldn't have built that place I guess. Talk about a bust!

Oh well, at least DC isn't too far away if you want to fly somewhere. Only about a 4 hour drive and then you can actually fly somewhere. PIT is toast!