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

[AaronPGH]

I personally can't stand Spirit airlines or driving out to Latrobe for a flight, but hey – if it adds more travelers to the market then I'm all for it.

[gg]

Originally Posted by AaronPGH

I personally can't stand Spirit airlines or driving out to Latrobe for a flight, but hey – if it adds more travelers to the market then I'm all for it.

I would rather drive out there and park for free and not deal with that ridiculous security line that is so long and slow that it is a joke, but I digress.

[PITairport]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

What about ISP?

Highly unlikely IMO. Spirit does not serve ISP at all. If they ever begin service there, I doubt it would be from LBE.

[PITairport]

Originally Posted by h_curtis

Wish they would offer flights to LGA and TPA! That would ROCK!!! Do you think they might someday?

Originally Posted by PITairport

I see TPA or RSW (Ft. Myers) as a real possibility. Six months ago I would have said no to LGA because Spirit seemed to focus on leisure markets from LBE; not to mention LGA is a slot controlled airport and I imagine they would use those slots for service elsewhere. However, since then they announced DFW, which is a major business market. So it looks like they are looking to broaden the scope of service at LBE.

Having said that, LBE-DFW may be an anomaly as Spirit has developed DFW into a small hub, and will offer connections to points west. In addition to Marcellus Shale energy traffic.

My best guess is that the success of the DFW service will determine if Spirit expands into other business markets such as LGA, BOS, etc

Well the chance of Spirit serving LGA is about to get better.

Unfortunately, JetBlue will discontinue JFK service from PIT. Its "only" two flights, but this will be a big deal. Here's why, from an article from 2007, one year after JetBlue added PIT service:

"But despite a doubling of traffic from Pittsburgh to New York in that time .........

But Barger said JetBlue has helped lower air fares in the Pittsburgh market. Since June 30, 2006, average Pittsburgh fares have dropped to $84 for New York JFK flights from $221. Average fares to Boston have fallen to $97 from $178."

JetBlue celebrates 1st anniversary in city | TribLIVE

One year after launching PIT-JFK service, fares to NYC dropped by 2/3, and traffic doubled. We can expect the opposite to happen now as fares increase, and losing B6 will have the same effect that losing Southwest to PHL did, even though there will still be multiple airlines serving NYC. It was JetBlue which caused that market stimulation with low fares, not the other airlines.

Delta added 6x LGA service not too long ago. But at the same time they reduced JFK by 2x daily, and US Airways reduced LGA by 2x daily. With the loss of JetBlue, we will now be right back where we were in terms of frequency to NYC. Except JFK will be not served well, and no low fare competition at all.

Perhaps DL will add a frequency back to JFK, and I imagine the folks at LBE are on the phone with Spirit about possible LGA service. If fares do in fact increase significantly to NYC, suppressing the local market back to pre-JetBlue levels... then we might see Spirit add LBE-LGA after all.

It's still only a remote possibility, but its more probable than it was yesterday.

[okaydorothy]

Oh gosh and I have used Pitt Airport more in the past three months!! And am about to again during Dec. Compared to either of the NY airports, Pitt is a breeze.

Beware of Delta going into JFK ; the last time I did it, they cancelled the flight that I was on and after panicking, they put me on the LGA flight. I had a house closing that day and just could not change it.

Moving here certainely has made our trips to Ireland more interesting.

[LIRefugee]

Originally Posted by PITairport

then we might see Spirit add LBE-LGA after all.

The key thing for anyone to keep in mind with ANY service to LGA is that it is a slot-controlled airport. Therefore Spirit, in order to start serving LGA from LBE, would need to either acquire slots from a different airline or reallocate existing slots to LBE. Right now they service DFWx1, ORDx2, DTWx2, FLLx4, and MYRx2 from LGA. Therefore they would have to determine that LBE would be more profitable than any of those above.

I'm guessing that American's bankruptcy is the impetus behind Spirit's pounce on DFW.

[PITairport]

Originally Posted by okaydorothy

Oh gosh and I have used Pitt Airport more in the past three months!! And am about to again during Dec. Compared to either of the NY airports, Pitt is a breeze.

Beware of Delta going into JFK ; the last time I did it, they cancelled the flight that I was on and after panicking, they put me on the LGA flight. I had a house closing that day and just could not change it.

Moving here certainely has made our trips to Ireland more interesting.

Well you should be safe in Dec; JetBlue doesn't discontinue JFK until late Feb. They will continue their BOS service, with an interline agreement with Aer Lingus so you should still be able to use them to get to Ireland.

Originally Posted by LIRefugee

The key thing for anyone to keep in mind with ANY service to LGA is that it is a slot-controlled airport. Therefore Spirit, in order to start serving LGA from LBE, would need to either acquire slots from a different airline or reallocate existing slots to LBE. Right now they service DFWx1, ORDx2, DTWx2, FLLx4, and MYRx2 from LGA. Therefore they would have to determine that LBE would be more profitable than any of those above.

I agree completely wrt the slot issue and touched on that in my original post. We'll see what happens.

[greg42]

I don't think the JetBlue JFK thing is that surprising, although I wonder how long they will stay on here with only BOS. That doesn't seem like a recipe for anything too useful for them in the long term to have one dead-end flight. Too bad. We always fly them to BOS, well, except that I try to avoid flying a lot more in the last couple years so I haven't flown it in a couple years. I wonder how much that is figuring into the mix, probably only a little tiny bit, but there are a few of us. I've been driving to Boston so I'd certainly sooner drive to NY or take the Megabus. Ah! There's another thing that eats into flying to NYC, Megabus. I'll bet that hurt noticeably. I'd spend more time taking Megabus for less hassle for sure, and it costs a lot less too. Just takes more time. It's a tradeoff a lot of people are willing to make.

I think people going to NY as a destination are looking more for LGA, and people connecting are usually doing a single-line connect through wherever. Nobody in their right mind is going to start from here and connect on JetBlue through JFK to get to, well, pretty much anywhere. Don't want to fly east to go west and don't want to fly north to go south. Yes you could use it to connect to international flights there, but that goes back to the single-line connect. More likely someone chooses Delta, United, whatever for an international trip.

I don't know why they hinged success on JFK. If JetBlue put on PIT-MCO or something I'll bet that would do okay. Although if they did that they would be competing directly with Southwest which they probably don't like.

[okaydorothy]

I have been lucky getting connections thru Chicago or Philly. The beauty of both of them is that the stopover is usually only 2 hours and the flight itself is about an hour. Dh had longer stopovers in NY or Boston. He lets me book the flights now!!

[Evergrey]

Delta to add Orlando-Pittsburgh nonstop for spring break - Pittsburgh Business Times

Delta to add Orlando-Pittsburgh nonstop for spring break

Pittsburgh Business Times by Paul J. Gough, Web Producer
Date: Wednesday, December 12, 2012, 2:36pm EST

Delta Air Lines is adding a Saturday nonstop flight between Pittsburgh and Orlando for about six weeks next spring.

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