BoeingBoy
Veteran
- Nov 9, 2003
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Mike Boyd's thoughts on the effect that liquidation of U will have on various cities:
U city analysis
Jim
U city analysis
Jim
If U Liquidates
- Thread starter BoeingBoy
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Art at ISP
Veteran
Interesting--to Boyd ISP doesn't exist.
WorldTraveler
Corn Field
- Dec 5, 2003
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Most of the EAS cities probably don’t justify continued subsidies given how close many of them are to other cities. Some will pick up service on other carriers but most of US’ EAS’ cities will probably lose service altogether. Given the glut of RJs in the market, there will be carriers willing to start new service with a subsidy if communities are willing to help reduce the risk.
We're in deregulation. If a city can't pull it's weight and profit for a carrier to serve it shouldn't have air service. This is the JetBlue and SWA model.
Oh, wait . . . . maybe we're not as "deregulated" as we thought. The politicians want air service to all their small towns and cheap. The fact that it's being done by serf employees is of no consequence to them.
Oh, wait . . . . maybe we're not as "deregulated" as we thought. The politicians want air service to all their small towns and cheap. The fact that it's being done by serf employees is of no consequence to them.
Hi all,
Yup, as others said, wecome to de-regulation. If the anti-legacy crowd gets their way, you will see air service only to the top 100 markets.
Everyone else can ride the train...oops, no train servce to most places. Hello, Greyhound? Actually, there probably is money to be made in the ground transport sector if the legacy carriers go away, or drastically retrench. If I was a senior exec at Greyhound, I would be making some long term plans to capitalize on the name recongnition and exisiting network to fill in the service gaps. Irony is that the Greyhound driver probably makes as much as a RJ Captain.
This is also the reason you don't get high speed internet out in rural America...costs are too high for the itty bitty revenue you will capture. If it wasn't for the government backed TVA, most of the Tennessee valley would still be using iceboxes. It will be interesting to see how "essential" air service really becomes.
In any event, the irony is that if Congress insists on service rural cities through the EAS program, the way they recoup the cost of that is higher ticket taxes, which represent a much higher percentage of ticket price for the LCCs. You're going to wind up paying more anyway.
Nu
Yup, as others said, wecome to de-regulation. If the anti-legacy crowd gets their way, you will see air service only to the top 100 markets.
Everyone else can ride the train...oops, no train servce to most places. Hello, Greyhound? Actually, there probably is money to be made in the ground transport sector if the legacy carriers go away, or drastically retrench. If I was a senior exec at Greyhound, I would be making some long term plans to capitalize on the name recongnition and exisiting network to fill in the service gaps. Irony is that the Greyhound driver probably makes as much as a RJ Captain.
This is also the reason you don't get high speed internet out in rural America...costs are too high for the itty bitty revenue you will capture. If it wasn't for the government backed TVA, most of the Tennessee valley would still be using iceboxes. It will be interesting to see how "essential" air service really becomes.
In any event, the irony is that if Congress insists on service rural cities through the EAS program, the way they recoup the cost of that is higher ticket taxes, which represent a much higher percentage of ticket price for the LCCs. You're going to wind up paying more anyway.
Nu
Art at ISP said:
With a whopping four daily Dash-8's to PHL and two daily B1900's to ALB, arguably ISP doesn't exist to US Airways anymore, either. He also left ERI out of his listing and I'm unclear as to where US gets 9 cities in the "Mountain West" unless he's lumping everything west of the Mississippi and east of PHX into that category (including the EAS cities in Kansas).
Many EAS cities will pick up service to other hubs -- I can see some of the western NY, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia cities gaining access to DTW, CLE, CVG, or IAD. A number of the EAS cities in the Carolinas would probably get access to ATL. Small community air service in northern New England has long been focused on Boston and would likely continue that way in partnership with AA or DL.
Winglet said:
Well, it's not quite so simple as that. It's hard to argue for the "necessity" of air service in a place like AHN when ATL is an hour-and-a-half away. Or at LYH when ROA and CHO are both within 60 miles or so. Air service used to be critical for communities back before interstate highways; these days flying out of the small-town airport doesn't save much time over driving to a hub that's less than two hours away.
But it's not just about a place being a city that "can't pull its weight." Compare service at AVP (serving an MSA of 625,000) to MAF (with an MSA of 237,000). The dominant airline at AVP, US Airways, offers ten daily departures, six to PHL and four to PIT, with one 737, four CRJ's, three ERJ's, and two Dash-8's. The dominant airline at MAF, Southwest, offers fourteen daily departures (all on 737's) to ABQ (2), AUS (2), DAL (6), ELP (1), HOU (2), and LAS (1). Need to fly PIT-AVP on short notice? It'll cost you $746 round-trip. Need to fly MAF-HOU on short notice? $284 round-trip walk-up for nearly twice the distance -- this is lower than US's cheapest PIT-AVP fare with lots of restrictions and $100 change fees. BOI serves a smaller area as well and yet manages to support far more service.
ELP_WN_Psgr
Senior
- Nov 29, 2003
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SFB. What a great post. It evoked a lot of flashbacks.
Whenever I think of MAF I think of the radio station I used to listen to when I lived out there in the late 70s/early 80s.... It was an AM station, as I rceall its call letters were KCRS, and it's slogan was "KCRS....disco radio for the vast but beautiful Permian Basin empire."
You mentioned the fares....what you didn't mention was that airlines ought to charge people 5 ttimes the fare for flying them ANYWHERE from MAF, but paying them to fly back.
Maybe in some future world Midland/Odessa will catch on as a real gee-whiz vacation resort........flat, sparsely vegetated arid steppes will do to people then what someplace like Colorado, the Cascades or cancun does to them now.
Whenever I think of MAF I think of the radio station I used to listen to when I lived out there in the late 70s/early 80s.... It was an AM station, as I rceall its call letters were KCRS, and it's slogan was "KCRS....disco radio for the vast but beautiful Permian Basin empire."
You mentioned the fares....what you didn't mention was that airlines ought to charge people 5 ttimes the fare for flying them ANYWHERE from MAF, but paying them to fly back.
Maybe in some future world Midland/Odessa will catch on as a real gee-whiz vacation resort........flat, sparsely vegetated arid steppes will do to people then what someplace like Colorado, the Cascades or cancun does to them now.
ELP_WN_Psgr
Senior
- Nov 29, 2003
- 419
- 0
I have still not reconciled myself to the fact that they moved the CAF from HRL to MAF.
HRL...now THAT was a neat place to go.
The Palmetto Inn...The Oyster Bar (where the shrimp you eat today slept in the gulf last night)......people speaking predominantly in a foreign language and you didn't even have to go thru customs. Palms. Tropical breezes. Get a 7 yr old Dodge from Ugly Duckling rent-a-car and nobody will think you are a tourist. Stay at the Sun Valley Motor Inn...maybe duck across to Matamoros for a few bottles of duty free tequila.
The deal with MAF vs AVP is that MAF is a much longer drive from anywhere compared to AVP.
Re replacing EAS flights with Greyhound -- I certainly wouldn't want to take a bus over the mountains in the winter. Give me a bumpy ride on a B1900 any day!
If Delta wants to start flying to JST (if that is an EAS city, just my guess), they are welcome to do so. The idea is to maintain service to these small communities that wouldn't have any commercial air service if it weren't for EAS.
One of the advantages of de-regulation is that you had decent service to small cities (e.g., you have to fly LYH-TYS in exchange for a NYC-CHI slot). Post de-regulation, service to small cities is not that great, but it's better than nothing. We need EAS, or the air travel system will exist solely for the benefit of those flying between cities of over 1 million.
The 7.5% excise tax and $3.10/segment tax brings in billions and billions of dollars. It's not even spent, so there surely is enough to continue funding EAS.
Re replacing EAS flights with Greyhound -- I certainly wouldn't want to take a bus over the mountains in the winter. Give me a bumpy ride on a B1900 any day!
If Delta wants to start flying to JST (if that is an EAS city, just my guess), they are welcome to do so. The idea is to maintain service to these small communities that wouldn't have any commercial air service if it weren't for EAS.
One of the advantages of de-regulation is that you had decent service to small cities (e.g., you have to fly LYH-TYS in exchange for a NYC-CHI slot). Post de-regulation, service to small cities is not that great, but it's better than nothing. We need EAS, or the air travel system will exist solely for the benefit of those flying between cities of over 1 million.
The 7.5% excise tax and $3.10/segment tax brings in billions and billions of dollars. It's not even spent, so there surely is enough to continue funding EAS.
If US dies, it doesn't kill Colgan and the other independent express operators. They are still seperate companies and are alive. They may have to find a new agreement to fly under with another carrier but that can be done. Since UA codeshares on a lot of those routes, short term it might be a deal like UA has with ZK.
jimntx
Veteran
NuGuy said:
Actually, I just read a long article in the paper about the fact that Greyhound has eliminated stops in a lot of the small towns it passes through. I remember the time when, if Greyhound went through the town, it stopped in the town. Now with a lot of small towns located a mile or two off the Interstate, Greyhound has decided it is not cost effective to serve those towns. They do not even stop in some of the towns they pass right through.
Funny part of the article was that some of the towns get EAS service from an airline. When a town can't generate enough traffic for the Greyhound bus to stop once a day, should it get scheduled air service????
