Pittsburgh Airport traffic down seven of the last eight months!

[Geeo]

Isn't total passenger traffic between 8 and 9 million/year? The airport is at the level it needs for local service. Ironically, our airport was taking off in passenger traffic during some of our worst economic times in the 80s and 90s. Now Charlotte's is taking of during their time of high unemployment.

Lots of cities are doing well as non-hub airports. I can think of Raleigh, Columbus, Indianapolis, Des Moines, and Austin for a few.

[pman]

Originally Posted by Velvet Jones

This is what was always so disingenuous about US Air's claims about Pittsburgh. They tried to frame it all about population and lack of local traffic, but Charlotte is on par or even a smaller market. Truth is US Air wanted out of PIT after sticking the county with the bill for the airport, and was looking for any excuse possible to leave. If the AA merger is approved Charlotte will likely be on the chopping block next.

Charlotte is one of the cheapest airports in the country (AFAIK) when it comes to per flight charges. I don't think they were looking to "stick it to the county" so much as they were looking to lower their costs by any means necessary.Philadelphia got the international flights for geographical and demand reasons (OD traffic is much higher than at either CLT or PIT). Interestingly, US Air has been fighting plans to upgrade that airport and threatening to move if the fees increased. lesson learned for them I guess.Of course, it isn't the same airline. After they dehubbed PIT, they were bought out shortly thereafter. the current HQ is in Phoenix, the home of America West.

[Velvet Jones]

Originally Posted by Geeo

Isn't total passenger traffic between 8 and 9 million/year? The airport is at the level it needs for local service. Ironically, our airport was taking off in passenger traffic during some of our worst economic times in the 80s and 90s. Now Charlotte's is taking of during their time of high unemployment.

Lots of cities are doing well as non-hub airports. I can think of Raleigh, Columbus, Indianapolis, Des Moines, and Austin for a few.

The number was cited in the Trib article a couple of pages back:

Pittsburgh International is ranked at No. 43 with 3.3 million passengers from March 2012 to March 2013.


That number is down from even a few years ago.

[PITairport]

PIT's total passenger count is approximately 8 million per year.

Originally Posted by Velvet Jones

This is what was always so disingenuous about US Air's claims about Pittsburgh. They tried to frame it all about population and lack of local traffic, but Charlotte is on par or even a smaller market. Truth is US Air wanted out of PIT after sticking the county with the bill for the airport, and was looking for any excuse possible to leave. If the AA merger is approved Charlotte will likely be on the chopping block next.

US Airways was quite clear that they were concerned about the airport's high cost structure before they eliminated the hub. As far as comparisons with CLT, Charlotte is actually a larger O&D market than Pittsburgh. I posted this in another thread some time ago:

Originally Posted by PITairport

Comparing CLT and PIT, CLT has quite a bit more O&D. In the 4th quarter of 2010, PIT had under 1.9 million O&D passengers while CLT had over 2.4 million. And this is after PIT had its market stimulated by new competion while CLT's numbers would be artificially depressed as there is little competition.

Not only that, but the quality of the O&D in CLT is higher yielding when measured by gross ticket yield.

http://www.aviationplanning.com/Imag...%20Traffic.pdf

Then add in the much lower costs of operating at CLT vs PIT, plus the duopoly on Southeast traffic flows (only competing with ATL).
So yes, I believe CLT continues to make sense for US/AA.

The link now seems to be broken but it basically showed data verifying this claim, not to mention CLT having better yielding tickets. If the merger goes through, CLT's future is secure with AA.