Salt Lake City Re-alignment

[jimmyd]

I've heard information that Delta will be announcing a major re-alignment of the Salt Lake City hub this week, possibly on Wed am. Has anybody else, mainly Delta SLC employees heard this also. From what I understand, the late evening bank will be eliminated with the rest of the day having more but much smaller connecting banks. Many mainline flights will be cut, replaced by regional jets. No markets will lose service.

 

[Cosmo]

Here's your answer, in this press release that Delta just issued this morning.

 

[mturpiz]

Quick recap:

Mainline drops by 20 flights from 115 to 95
DL* increases by 28 flights from 178 to 206

One bank is dropped but other banks get busier, with a net increase of 8 from 293 to 301 total.

SLC-DTW is new, 2x on DL

Mainline disappears completely from seven cities: BIL GTF MSO HLN FCA PSC & GEG. (No other cities are losing DL completely, although it's possible some cities are losing all their mainline flights to SLC but still have DL flights elsewhere.)

 

[wrx]

Is DL pulling completely out of Montana? Or is Skywest going to service it?

 

[mturpiz]

>Is DL pulling completely out of Montana? Or is Skywest going to service it?<

Sorry I didn't make myself clear...all the dropped DL cities will still have SkyWest flights to SLC. I think SLC will retain service to all their cities in one form or another as far as I can tell.

 

[wrx]

mturpiz,

Thanks for the information. I have a home in Montana and I ID90 on DL to get to it. That would have stunk to drive from SLC up to Montana.

 

[ITRADE]

With a metro area thats a fair amount smaller that PIT, its not surprising that DL is cutting down on service to an extent. While its DL's furthest hub west, the O/D base is not going to support a huge amount of traffic. Hence, the reduction in O/D banks and the increase in connection banks.

 

[michael707767]

Mainline disappears completely from seven cities: BIL GTF MSO HLN FCA PSC & GEG. (No other cities are losing DL completely, although it's possible some cities are losing all their mainline flights to SLC but still have DL flights elsewhere.)

Since Southwest has a pretty strong presence at SLC, any bets on how long it takes them to move into every one of the cities Delta just cut service to????

 

[ITRADE]

Since Southwest has a pretty strong presence at SLC, any bets on how long it takes them to move into every one of the cities Delta just cut service to????

None. Southwest usually doesn't fly into areas like Great Falls, MT which has a population of less than 100,000....

 

[Cosmo]

Since Southwest has a pretty strong presence at SLC, any bets on how long it takes them to move into every one of the cities Delta just cut service to????

Southwest already serves GEG, including nonstop from SLC. As for the other six cities, IMHO four of them (HLN, FCA, MSO and PSC) have no chance whatsoever for Southwest service anytime soon given their relatively small sizes. And while BIL and GTF are larger cities and thus somewhat more appealing, I still don't think it's very likely that Southwest will start to them either in the near future because the carrier has better opportunities elsewhere (ABE, COS and RIC, among others).

 

[jimmyd]

Eventhough Southwest is the 2nd largest carrier at SLC in terms of local passengers, their loads would indicate they have plenty of empty seats at SLC. I seriously doubt Southwest will add any service in response to the Delta mainline cutbacks. For the YE 2Q 2003 period, according to the USDOT T100 database, Southwest's SLC load factors are as follows;

MCI 69.1%
BWI 68.8
LAS 68.5%
OAK 67.0%
LAX 66.2%
STL 65.4%
ABQ 64.5%
PHX 61.7%
SEA 59.6%
GEG 56.6%
BOI 55.6%
RNO 55.0%
PDX 48.9%

weighted average = 63.0%

 

[ITRADE]

Welcome to USaviation, Jimmyd. Thanks for that data dump.

I will note, however, that WN has historically run lower than major LFs on its flights. When the majors run in the low 70s, WN will often run in the mid 60s.