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American Airlines apparently will eliminate the only nonstop service between the Santa Fe Airport and Los Angeles International Airport at the end of summer. “September 8 is the last day,” said Terry Williams-Keffer of Westwind Travel in Santa Fe.
While LAX has consistently been the lowest performing of the three destinations served either by American Eagle (DFW and LAX) or United Express (DEN), the city probably views LAX as the most important of the three due to the convenience to the film industry. I can see why it is seen as a major blow to both the film industry as well as the city.
Also, probably DFW and DEN have a large percentage of connecting passengers, while LAX probably has a larger share of origin and destination traffic. Apparently the origin and destination traffic (which usually is willing to pay higher fares) on LAX was still not enough to keep flying the route. In fact, American Eagle didn't fly ABQ-LAX when SAF's service to LAX started; I presume when American Eagle began to fly ABQ-LAX in 2011 this likely siphoned passengers away from the Santa Fe flights.
While American Eagle has their own reasons, I can't imagine SAF's dinky little runway worked in its favor. If the ticket counter got a rush of passengers for a flight or an equipment failure, they couldn't switch it out for a bigger plane if they wanted to. Albuquerque could happily accommodate the change because it has good runways.
Combine that with SAF's altitude and you'd frequently have to run planes with seats empty on hot days, or throw luggage overboard for a larger flight (I'm sure that's popular with film crews). American Eagle doesn't have that problem if they want to send that plane on new service to say, San Jose.
SAF's still been growing in leaps and bounds and as such I think it's time to give serious consideration to upgrading its primary runway to take bigger planes. Carriers like Delta and low-cost carriers like Sun Country, Allegiant or Spirit could introduce more destinations if their planes could land there.
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