Pittsburgh Airport traffic down seven of the last eight months! (Houston: theater, live)

[gg]

Pittsburgh air traffic down slightly in February - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

PIT is hurting!

[cheezit34141988]

I've been doing my part...pretty sure the US Airways stewardesses on the Monday AM directs to Midway and Reagan know me by name now...

[LIRefugee]

How passenger traffic at PIT compares to the overall trend in this country is really what matters (if anything), not the raw numbers for PIT itself.

I'd also hesitate to call a 0.4% drop "hurting".

I'm on the Paris flight Sunday, it'll be interesting to see how full the plane is. The seatmap right now is at least 60%-70% full.

[greg42]

I've contributed to the down traffic by not flying. I'd drive anywhere within 10-11 hours, and probably more as long as I had time. Since I've only gone one place outside that range since October 2010, I have only flown once in 18 months (and it was Florida, and I tried very hard to figure out a way to drive it, but time was tighter and family more important than my principles). Should be more like 5-6 times flying in that time period. And that would be two people, each time (except for that FL trip).

[LIRefugee]

Official Stats are available only up until Dec 2011, but looking at the Pittsburgh snapshot, traffic at PIT increased slightly more pecentage-wise than overall domestic traffic. Here is a table taking total domestic enplanements month-by-month for 2010 vs. 2011:

Domestic Revenue Passenger Enplanements (Jan 2010 - Dec 2011) (000)

Jan 2010 53,043 Jan 2011 54,173 102.13%
Feb 2010 49,091 Feb 2011 50,550 102.97%
Mar 2010 62,735 Mar 2011 64,160 102.27%
Apr 2010 60,135 Apr 2011 61,030 101.49%
May 2010 61,938 May 2011 64,345 103.89%
Jun 2010 65,512 Jun 2011 66,626 101.70%
Jul 2010 69,078 Jul 2011 70,462 102.00%

Subtotal 421,532 431,346 102.33%

Aug 2010 66,814 Aug 2011 66,820 100.01%
Sep 2010 57,841 Sep 2011 58,599 101.31%
Oct 2010 62,648 Oct 2011 61,745 98.56%
Nov 2010 58,653 Nov 2011 58,660 100.01%
Dec 2010 59,040 Dec 2011 59,414 100.63%

Subtotal 304,996 305,238 100.08%

Total 726,528 Total 736,584 101.38%

SOURCE: Bureau of Transportation Statistics

As you can see, from Jan to Jul, passenger traffic increased by 2.33%, but afterwards only increased slightly, so the slight drop in PIT traffic recently is being felt generally.

(sorry for the formatting, I was in a hurry)

[cheezit34141988]

Originally Posted by greg42

I've contributed to the down traffic by not flying. I'd drive anywhere within 10-11 hours, and probably more as long as I had time. Since I've only gone one place outside that range since October 2010, I have only flown once in 18 months (and it was Florida, and I tried very hard to figure out a way to drive it, but time was tighter and family more important than my principles). Should be more like 5-6 times flying in that time period. And that would be two people, each time (except for that FL trip).

I fly very often for work (weekly in fact)...PIT as an airport is actually not that bad after having regularly been to several of the "worst airports"...i.e. O'hare/Midway/LaGuardia/etc on a regular basis. Its definitely made me appreciate the ease of access/smaller atmosphere.

It seems very dead most times, the only time I've seen it busy (a backup in the TSA lines) is on Monday mornings from 6-9am.

[Blackbeauty212]

Originally Posted by dtrtrggr13

It seems very dead most times, the only time I've seen it busy (a backup in the TSA lines) is on Monday mornings from 6-9am.

That's because PIT was built to be a Central HUB, and its no longer that so even with modest amounts of traffic to/from destination PIT its not going to seem overly busy.

[BrianTH]

I don't have the detailed information I would need to prove it, but I suspect a lot of what we are seeing in these numbers was an increase fueled in part by shale workers, which is now leveling off as fewer shale workers are commuting from out of state and in general low natural gas prices are somewhat slowing the pace of shale-related job growth.

[greg42]

Originally Posted by dtrtrggr13

It seems very dead most times, the only time I've seen it busy (a backup in the TSA lines) is on Monday mornings from 6-9am.

I've seen it busy at some other time. I think it was a Friday evening actually, can't remember for sure. That would make sense though. Busy is good, might mean they have to quit using the time-wasting scanners for a bit.

I try to put my money where my mouth is regarding the whole security theater racket. That's why I'm not flying. Here's a great new graphical explanation making the rounds today: TSA Waste | Online Criminal Justice Degree

[MathmanMathman]

I had to fly to Houston recently from Atlanta. Practically ran through TSA, the check of my boarding pass and ID took the longest, maybe a 1 minute wait. Same returning from Houston but maybe a 2 minute wait while checking my boarding pass and ID. No body scan at either airport, just metal detector. And I would add that Atlanta's MARTA rail line to the airport really made getting to the airport easy. Houston doesn't have it, except by bus, which was a pain.

Atlanta's airport is massive. The main terminal has a concourse, then 5 more concourses A-E which you reach either by a mini-train or you can walk through a tunnel with two moving walkways to each concourse. And soon a new international terminal will be opened. One concourse at Pittsburgh is about half the length of one concourse of Atlanta's.

Funny how Pittsburgh has the infrastructure and capacity but that doesn't bring in the flights. Or it did, but not anymore. So why does Atlanta have 11 times as many passengers and about 7 times more flight operations?

Houston has two airports, Hobby and George Bush International. I flew to Hobby but for some reason flights to Pittsburgh are only through George Bush.