Pittsburgh Flights

[mweiss]

Fly point-to-point between the Top 10 Origin and Destination market from PIT. If US Airways does this at PIT, what's left for Southwest and jetBlue to do in PIT???

They'll offer the service on mainline jets at half the price. Unless US can do that and still be profitable, that's what WN and B6 will do.

 

[Whatnow?]

US already undercuts SWA on most of their routes! Conde Nast Traveler ranked Airlines with the lowest fares recently and believe or not out of 7 they ranked SWA was #7, USAirways was #5! SWA is living off of a gimmick that they are the cheapest airline to fly, not true. In Philly SWA is advertising $29 fares to the Boston area, aka..PVD, USA irways advertises nonstop to Boston for $44! SWA airlines pax still have to figure out how they are going to get from PVD to BOS, almost 1 hour driving time away from each other! Have fun!

 

[FM2436]

They'll offer the service on mainline jets at half the price. Unless US can do that and still be profitable, that's what WN and B6 will do.

And why do you think US Airways wouldn't operate a A319 or A 320 between those Top 10 Origin and Destination markets from PIT? US Airways is not, and will not be, made-up of entirely 50 and 70 seat aircraft.

 

[mweiss]

US already undercuts SWA on most of their routes!

Where they compete, that's true. And they lose money on every flight. Not sustainable.

 

[mweiss]

And why do you think US Airways wouldn't operate a A319 or A 320 between those Top 10 Origin and Destination markets from PIT? US Airways is not, and will not be, made-up of entirely 50 and 70 seat aircraft.

I apologize if you thought I was certain they wouldn't. US does fly many RJs, mostly because of the lower wage structure AFAICT. Regardless of equipment, if US doesn't have higher RASM than CASM on the route, it's all moot.

BTW, do you live in LaGrange?

 

[TomBascom]

Where they compete, that's true. And they lose money on every flight. Not sustainable.

But it's only half, or less, of the story.

US routinely undercuts the lowest WN price. But they simultaneously offer fares that are vastly higher than anything WN will ever charge and given the maze of rules and restrictions surrounding the nominally lower fares many people do end up being quoted the far higher fares -- which reinforces Southwest's "low fare" image.

Furthermore even if you do buy a US ticket whose face value if less than that of a WN ticket it isn't an apples to apples comparison -- the fungibility of a US ticket is significantly different from that of a WN ticket.

 

[MarkMyWords]

Mainline currently has 107 departures a day at PIT. If mainline only served PHL, CLT, Florida, West Coast, LGA, ORD, DCA and BOS (as we do today) we would be down to 70 mainline flights (give or take a few.) Now enters MidAtlantic, PSA and the other express carriers to serve cities like DFW, BNA, ALB, ROC, BUF, RIC, MHT, BWI, etc.

There is no way that PHL or CLT could handle flights to such cities as GRR, TOL, EVV, SBN, PKB, DUJ, JHW, BFD, ELM, ITH, etc. So there will still be a major presence here in PIT in order to maintain service to most of the cities on the route map. Totally pulling the wheels off of PIT would mean the elimination of service to many communities and I dont' think that is going to happen. So the numbers of 65+ mainline flights may not be off base, but only 38 express flights, IMO is way off base. Remeber, DCA is a focus city with over 200 flights a day.

 

[funguy2]

Why would running the smaller Express cities via PHL be impossible? I understand there are facility issues, but assuming those are smoothed over with a rolling hub, why can't an ELM pax connect at PHL instead of PIT... The only smaller cities that might be too difficult to connect over PHL vs. PIT would be those extremely west of PIT like EVV and GRR. I have to assume the traffic is generally flowing to points other than PIT, so what difference does it make where the connection is (assuming the facility can handle it)?

 

[airbiiguy]

they should at least consider the top 3 or 4 performing smaller cities and route them through either PHL or CLT.

 

[<./']>]

As far as regional service at PIT? Fly point-to-point service from PIT to markets within 400 nm that will generate 60-70% loads

Who's going to be on these flights. There's not much OD traffic from PIT. 60-70% loads on a Cessna 182 maybe.

 

[matika]

[quote name='<' date='./'']>,May 21 2004, 06:00 PM]
Who's going to be on these flights. There's not much OD traffic from PIT. 60-70% loads on a Cessna 182 maybe.[/quote]
I believe someone mentioned that PIT's O&D is actually higher than CLT's.

 

[FutureCEO]

Here's the data on O&D passengers for 2002.

Pittsburgh- 5,064,640
Charlotte- 4,073,090
Cincinnati- 3,492,180

The numbers don't lie, Pittsburgh isn't as bad as some would have you think. Given the right mix of carriers at PIT this figure couuld easily climb over 6 million.

 

[autofixer]

CLt's would be better too if people were not driving to GSO or RDU. Clt is the number 2 banking center in the U.S. That has to be worth something. If UAIR doesn't think so, I bet SWA or JTBLU does.