Eppley passengers numbers

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Post by flyOMA »

Swift wrote:We should email the chamber of commerce and get them to lobby JetBlue.
Has been going on for years...Basically, the response was Omaha is (at best) a low-frequency regional jet city for the routes they would serve (OMA-JFK, OMA-LGB, most likely).  I honestly don't know how good our chances are for the foreseeable future given ExpressJet's initiative to jump on the SoCal routes and CO's EWR service.

No airline is going to make Omaha a focus city at the present time.  We just don't have the proper terminal layout and structure to be a good connecting point (KC has the same problem).  Omaha is a classic strong O&D spoke market.  Our growth will continue come from further expansion and growth of our incumbent carriers.
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Post by Swift »

I would think the OCC would go to JetBlue and say "we will spend XXX millions of dollars to improve our airport to your specifications if you make Omaha a focus/transfer city".

Of course putting all the eggs in one basket like that is always a little nerve racking.
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Post by Big E »

Swift wrote:I would think the OCC would go to JetBlue and say "we will spend XXX millions of dollars to improve our airport to your specifications if you make Omaha a focus/transfer city".
But then Gernandt and Costner will be on the Save Eppley bandwagon...

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Post by StreetsOfOmaha »

Big E wrote:
Swift wrote:I would think the OCC would go to JetBlue and say "we will spend XXX millions of dollars to improve our airport to your specifications if you make Omaha a focus/transfer city".
But then Gernandt and Costner will be on the Save Eppley bandwagon...

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Post by agerlt »

As someone who works with airline management, the chances of Omaha being a focus city for any airline is slim to none.  Legacy airlines continue to scale back their domestic service, as international routes are the only way they're making money.  LCCs are in the position to grow and pick up the slack in domestic air service, but Southwest, AirTran, JetBlue, Frontier aren't likely to start any new focus cities any time soon.  Omaha doesn't have the O&D traffic to support being a focus city and if an airline did want to make it a focus city, they wouldn't have the gate room, either.  To run a focus city and/or hub, you'd need a minimum of 10 gates in an area (5 or 6 for a small focus city.)

Getting JetBlue to come to town is slightly more likely, but if so it will be a long way down the road.  JetBlue has yet to fly to many major central U.S. cities, and when they do expect STL, MCI, MSP, DFW, MKE, and DEN.  Even Chicago only has flights to NY and LA at this point.  JetBlue doesn't have aircraft to move to Omaha, and when they finally get around to opening it, you will get Long Beach and/or JFK flights to start - maybe Orlando, since that seems to be a growing focus city for them.
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Post by Swift »

Well Eppley has 21 gates...?


I don't see Omaha becoming a hub or transfer/focus city for any of the major airlines, that's why I think the OCC should go to JetBlue and offer to sink some serious money into upgrading Eppely to JetBlue's specifications.
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Post by joleo »

I've been reading this board everyday for years but never posted.  I only do now because I can't believe that nobody picked up on this yet and it was bookable as of last Friday.  Even the World Herald had nothing.  You can thank the people at the airport for not calling the newspaper to advertise this through an airport press release or something.  Maybe the World Herald will read this board.  

OMA-TUS N/S begins November 11th on XJET bookable at xjet.com  


Schedule:
oma-TUS at 2pm arriving at 4:03pm

TUS-oma at 935am arriving at 115pm

I'm really surprise how little lead time there is for this new route. Less than a month? That first week is going to be empty!

for anyone that is interested, O/D averaged 31 passengers per day each way. If XJET can get half of this and then stimulate another 15 passengers per day, they could average around 60% load factor. Might not work too bad with an average fare of 353.51 in the market.

It is going to take everyone's support to keep this one around though so everyone schedule a trip to Arizona soon or else it will fall by the wayside like the United flight from OMA to SAT that was dropped 13 months ago after only 6 1/2 months of service.
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Post by Coyote »

Thanks for that post joleo - and welcome to the forum.
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Post by Omababe »

joleo wrote:O/D averaged 31 passengers per day each way.
Possible dumb question here ... What does "O/D" mean?

Thanks. :)
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Post by Admin »

Origin/Destination (O/D)
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Post by Omababe »

Admin wrote:Origin/Destination (O/D)
Thanks. :)
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Post by jjjjhskr »

nice catch on the xjet flight!  Now if only they could decide to add flights to the bay area.

Also, United dropped the SAT flight when they decided to drop SAT as a small hub for regional jets.
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Post by omaja »

agerlt wrote:As someone who works with airline management, the chances of Omaha being a focus city for any airline is slim to none.  Legacy airlines continue to scale back their domestic service, as international routes are the only way they're making money.  LCCs are in the position to grow and pick up the slack in domestic air service, but Southwest, AirTran, JetBlue, Frontier aren't likely to start any new focus cities any time soon.  Omaha doesn't have the O&D traffic to support being a focus city and if an airline did want to make it a focus city, they wouldn't have the gate room, either.  To run a focus city and/or hub, you'd need a minimum of 10 gates in an area (5 or 6 for a small focus city.)

Getting JetBlue to come to town is slightly more likely, but if so it will be a long way down the road.  JetBlue has yet to fly to many major central U.S. cities, and when they do expect STL, MCI, MSP, DFW, MKE, and DEN.  Even Chicago only has flights to NY and LA at this point.  JetBlue doesn't have aircraft to move to Omaha, and when they finally get around to opening it, you will get Long Beach and/or JFK flights to start - maybe Orlando, since that seems to be a growing focus city for them.
A focus city most definitely does not need 10 gates.  Southwest’s operations in Los Angeles, Oakland, Orlando, and San Diego (some of its largest) are around—or more than—10 gates and 100 daily departures. While Southwest does not officially designate hubs and flights aren’t necessarily banked, these cities are about as hub-like as it gets.  Definitions vary, but a focus city is basically a non-banked hub catering to O/D traffic and offering a variety of destinations other than an airline's hubs.  I think (and things could have changed) that Midwest officially designates Eppley as a focus city, yet it only serves three destinations with something like a combined 8 daily departures.  I wouldn’t expect anything major, but something bigger than Midwest’s pathetic attempt at a “focus city” would be nice.

Maybe I’m just making the Omaha market seem better than it really is?  But it seems like there is a lot of untapped potential.  Really, Milwaukee doesn’t have O/D much better than Omaha; having said that, it should have larger O/D numbers given that it has a slightly larger metro area, it is Midwest’s hub, and it draws from northern Chicago suburbs.  Last year, Oklahoma City handled 800,000 less passengers than Eppley, yet it has service to 26 cities compared to Omaha’s current 20.  If ExpressJet thinks it is financially viable to start Omaha-Tuscon with an average of 64 daily O/D passengers year-round, surely Boston, Orlando, Portland OR, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, and Tampa with 100+ daily O/D warrant nonstop service, if only on a 50-seat regional jet.  ExpressJet has shown that Omaha-West Coast nonstop works.  What is so different about these markets?  Am I completely missing something?  :?

JetBlue already flies to DEN, but I would expect more untapped central markets like MCI, OMA and STL before the big, bad fortress hubs of DFW (in fact, I think JetBlue has said they refuse to serve DFW because of American), DTW, MSP, etc.  JetBlue only serves Chicago from JFK and LGB because of slot restrictions; they applied for eight daily and were only given four.  The only reason why I think OMA could be a better choice for a small focus city is that it has a substantially weaker Southwest presence compared to both MCI and STL, not to mention Midwest’s hub at MCI and American’s hub at STL.  Both airports might have higher O/D, but they are more saturated.

Southwest seems content with connecting people at LAS, MDW, PHX, and STL, and obviously none of the legacies are going to come in and start a focus city.  So that would lead us to AirTran and JetBlue, both of which could use a Midwestern focus city to help even out their heavily eastern-centric operations.  AirTran is apparently in the market for a Midwestern hub/focus city, as seen in its recent battle for Midwest Airlines.  JetBlue has been rumored to be on the search for one as well.  I don’t know how much they want one, but it appears as though there is some interest.

The likelihood of anything happening is debatable, but AirTran and JetBlue would undoubtedly be great catches for Eppley.
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Post by joleo »

jjjjhskr wrote:nice catch on the xjet flight!  Now if only they could decide to add flights to the bay area.

Also, United dropped the SAT flight when they decided to drop SAT as a small hub for regional jets.
Yes and No.  The SAT focus city wasn't the success that Trans States thought it would be under the direction of United.  They slowly cut flights as they were finding out that they were not working.  All flights were dropped by the end of July except SAT-OMA and SAT-COS.  Both seemed do fairly well.  In my mind, this was mainly because both OMA and COS are United strongholds and the other cities from the SAT focus were not UA strongholds.  These included MCI, ABQ, MSY, OKC, and TUL.  In fact that I've heard over the years that the OMA area is on of the top 10 cities nationwide for United Mileage Plus Members.  

Anyhow, OMA and COS were finally dropped after September and October bookings looked really bad.  I think the last day of service was around sept 20th.  The last month of service, the load factor was around 40% and of that, it was significantly helped by connecting traffic coming home from the USC-NU game in LA.  There was a good connection that went LAX-SAT-OMA, just not the other way around.  If Omahan's would have supported the service a little more, I bet it would still be around.  One of the things the airport could do is advertise for the service with airport, not airline funds through billboards.  This happens all over the country, just not in Omaha unfortunately.  

Hopefully the Tuscon service won't follow the same fate.  Without any mention of  the service on the local news, newspapers, press releases by the airport, or anything, I have the feeling that less than 100 people in the whole city know about the service.  How do we get this into the newspaper and on the news?  If anyone has any contacts, can you forward this request on?
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Post by joleo »

jjjjhskr wrote:By the way, does anyone know why American's numbers have jumped so much this year?
2 reasons:

1)  AA added a 5th OMA-DFW flight last January amount to a 25% increase in capacity.
2)  Prices on OMA-DFW were almost cut in half when the wright amendment agreement was reached making the planes about 10%-12% fuller than they used to be.  

This equates to a 40% increase in traffic.
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Post by jjjjhskr »

Joleo -

gracias
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Post by jjjjhskr »

The 2006 FAA airport stats are out -  OMA ranks as the 65th busiest airport, busier than larger cities like OKC.  Omaha ranks as a "large hub" airport, Oklahoma City ranks as a medium hub.  It's been said before but Omaha has a great asset in Eppley airfield.

http://www.faa.gov/airports_airtraffic/ ... p_comm.pdf
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Post by flyOMA »

I honestly hadn't heard anything about this new TUS route.  But, it doesn't entirely surprise me, XpressJet has been very aggressive in their expansion and route choices.  I wonder if this will just be a seasonal snowbird route?  TUS would be about the last place I would ever expect NS flights to and from Omaha.  Interesting.

Omaha actually has very good O&D numbers for a city our size.  However, our catchment area is pretty darn good too, especially when comparing ourselves to OKC.  The fact that both Tulsa and OKC have Southwest plays a large part in the difference, so they don't leach off each other.
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Post by Stargazer »

Omaha ranks as a "large hub" airport, Oklahoma City ranks as a medium hub
Actually Omaha is a "medium hub" (barely)... and OKC is a "small hub" (barely).  How humiliating for them. :D
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Post by jjjjhskr »

Darn.  You're right.

and I was really enjoying my moment of believing that we were considered a large hub.
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Post by jjjjhskr »

Another good month!

September 2007    
354,210 up 6.3%
year to date
2007            
3,343,085 up 5.4%
by airline in September 07 vs September 06
Southwest    81,566 up 6.6%
United          74,335 up 8.4%
Northwest     46,758 down 8%
American      42,282 up 9.4%
Delta            28,503 down 6.1%
Continental   22,044 up 6.3%
Midwest        19,310 up 29.8%
Frontier       19,145 up 40.0%
USAirways    13,607 down 4.2%
Express Jet    6,660
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Post by Stargazer »

So where do we stand this year?  Could we hit 4.5 million?
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Post by the1wags »

Taking last years total (4,229,856) by this years current 5.4% growth clip I get 4,458,268. Hopefully we can keep at that 5.4% growth. :)

Using a 5% annual growth beyond this year's estimate, I get a projection of 5,161,002 for 2010. :)
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Post by agerlt »

If you are doing a hub/focus city you would need a large gate presence, and I don't think any airline is going to come in and establish something capable of supporting hubs, which was what I was referring to in my earlier post.  That being said, I do think Omaha could support more direct service, as many cities much smaller than Omaha have more service.  They draw pax from all over Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and South Dakota - and the pax numbers keep increasing.

I would love for AirTran to serve Omaha.  Knowing that Delta gouges flights to ATL (It was more than $600 r/t on an RJ the last time I checked) and no nonstop service to Florida, they could start with a few daily r/t to ATL, MCO and either TPA or FLL, maybe even their BWI on 717, or even a 737.  For those of you who haven't flown them, they offer a great product - biz class on every flight and XM Satellite Radio, plus all their planes are Boeing jets.  They have another 50 737s on order through 2010, Omaha would be a great place to park them.
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Saturday-only flights give Southwest 8 new nonstop routes

Post by agerlt »

From USA Today travel blog:

Southwest is adding eight new nonstop routes. But, there's a catch –- the eight new routes will fly only on Saturdays. Southwest also is boosting its existing Saturday schedule in nearly three dozen cities, changes that are part of a new scheduling strategy at the carrier. Southwest's upcoming spring schedule is "different than Saturday schedules in the past," Southwest's lead schedule planner Bill Owen says on the airline's corporate blog. In the past, the airline's Saturday schedule has generally mirrored its flight schedule on the other six days of the week –- just with fewer flights.

"However, effective with Saturdays in the March schedule, we've implemented our first reoptimization within the week," he says. The "reoptimization" will include changes to the Saturday schedule that match customers' travel patterns that Owen says are "significantly different on weekends." He says the airline hopes to use this strategy in its future schedules. Owen adds that "as we more deeply imbed optimization technology into our scheduling processes, we eventually might be able to optimize each day of the week individually to better match customer need. Of course, we’ll need a LOT more experience to make that work….but we'll keep trying!"

As for the routes getting new nonstop connections thanks to the Saturday-only flights, they are: Dallas Love-Harlingen, Texas; Fort Lauderdale-Manchester, N.H.; Omaha-Orlando; Reno-Ontario, Calif.; Orlando-Oklahoma City; Orlando-Salt Lake City; Orlando-Tulsa; and Salt Lake City-San Diego. The new Saturday-only routes begin March 8 are currently listed as "temporary" on a Southwest press release that announces the flights. Southwest's schedule currently runs through May 9.
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Post by jjjjhskr »

Nice catch!  Here's the link from the Southwest website -

http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_fil ... elease.pdf

It looks like it will only last for a couple of months but we can hope it will be extended.

Should be a banner year next year.   I wouldn't be surprised if Xjet adds flights and so far we have the 3 Continental flights to CLE starting up in the spring.
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Post by Whale Shark »

I'd really like to see Southwest open a route to DEN.
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Post by agerlt »

I'm sure it's in the cards.  Frontier is struggling as an airline overall, even though they have a great product.  United is on that route and would put up quite a fight against Southwest.  It would open up much better connections for west coast cities on Southwest, though. (SEA, OAK, SFO, LAX, PDX.)  Vegas and Phoenix are a bit out of the way if you're going anywhere in NoCal or NW.
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Post by UNOstudent »

Some Bad News...

On Wikipedia, it says that Midwest route to LAX will be ending January 7th.
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Post by joleo »

UNOstudent wrote:Some Bad News...

On Wikipedia, it says that Midwest route to LAX will be ending January 7th.
Yes, that is correct, they stopped selling tickets around 4 weeks ago.  The loads this fall are horrible for Tues-Thurs.  This will leave DSM with nonstop service to LAX and none from Omaha.  United starts flying DSM-LAX this coming March.  Maybe United would pick up the slack...Two CR7's would work a ton better than 1 717 on midwest.  2 flights per day would work a ton better in addition to lots of connection possibilities compared to non on midwest.
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Post by Stargazer »

Touche DSM.

Apparently Smithey is slipping.
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Post by jjjjhskr »

Ouch!
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Post by agerlt »

The Midwest flight will come back on to the schedule in April, I believe.  The route is seasonal and with low load factors in Q1 and fuel costs so high, it makes sense for them to not run the route when demand is low.
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Post by Stargazer »

That doesn't make me feel any better when I see Des Moines retaining their LAX routes uninterrupted... possibly adding another, to "pick up the slack" in Omaha??

Give me a break!  we have more than twice the passenger traffic, yet we now have to drive to Des Moines to get a direct LAX flight??   What?  Are they subsidizing these routes?  If so, maybe it's time Eppley start spending some of it's moldy money and do the same.

I think this story is worthy of some press coverage... Johnny C... how about passing this along!
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Post by Swift »

Well they are having a presidential primary soon. All those TV ads don't make themselves... which might explain the direct flights to LAX.
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Post by OmahaJaysCU »

Swift wrote:Well they are having a presidential primary soon. All those TV ads don't make themselves... which might explain the direct flights to LAX.
Good point!  That would make a ton of sense.
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Post by Big E »

I guarantee you that 97% of political ads funded by the DNC or GOP are produced in or near DC (VA, Baltimore, even NYC).  It basically funds the entire industry in that part of the country.  If you took the political money out of the production economy in those areas, you'd probably put 50% of the people out of work.

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Post by joleo »

The sole reason why Des Moines is getting more destinations than Omaha has to do with who is running the airport marketing.  Roy, who does the marketing for the Des Moines airport is very agressive and is in tune with the community and airlines.  Des Moines has snagged NEW service to Washington DC, New York LaGuardia(2 airlines), Orlando, Tampa, Phoenix-Mesa, Los Angeles, and Cleveland all within the last year or so.  They will be getting Ft Lauderdale soon too I believe. This is for an airport that is half of OMA's size.  

Another airport that handles less passengers but with almost 10 more destinations than OMA is OKC.  About 15 of these destinations are relatively new with the new terminal and revamping of how they approach marketing.  For example, American cut service to over half of their cities from STL but cities like TUL got that service back with agressive marketing to American.  Omaha...nope.  Why not?  Who knows.  For TUL to get the service back, the airport went as far as to convincing the local senator to petition american for the service and it worked.  You sure don't hear about any of that in Omaha.

There is no reason why Omaha didn't get service to LA over DSM on United but poor marketing and airline contacts. Roy working on getting the service to DSM agressively for only 10 months and then it was announced.  In addition, why is there no Washington Dulles service from OMA when cities with a MUCH smaller united presence like OKC, LIT, SAT, AUS all have this service?  I can all but guarantee OMA-LAX, IAD and SFO on United would be really successful.  I can go on and on and write literally a 100 page report about this entire scenario but everyone should get the gist by now.  

On the other side, once a new service is announced,  there are multiple articles in the Des Moines Register and the local weekly Business journal and on all the news channels covering the new service.  They interview passengers, and Roy at the airport about the service.  Also, the day new service starts, every news agency covers the new service.  This comes from Roy at the airport informing the media.  Omaha got new service to Tucson just recently.  No Omaha World
Herald coverage, no news coverage, nothing that I found.  I wrote 2 letters and a few emails to the OWH to asked them to cover the new service so we can help to ensure that it sticks around.  No response and no article in the paper yet...not a peep.  Why should I be doing this and not the person incharge of airport marketing is better question.  

The airport needs to spend more money on marketing.  Offer some billboards for the new airlines, help them with costs for ads in the paper among a million other things that can help the service come and stay.  

Oklahoma City didn't need to built a brand new beautiful terminal but did to attract new service and to help the economy...it worked!  Maybe Omaha should start with that.  It's not about how many passengers, it's about how nice the airport is to compete with all the other airports in the region.  The airport needs to work with the city and quit acting as a separate entity.  

The sooner the airport realizes how important new air service is to the local economy, the better off Omaha will be in the long run.  First build the infrastructure, then then the stadium, don't put the cart before the horse.
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Post by omaja »

American and Northwest have been in a little pissing match trying to step into the other carrier's territory.  American started MSP-LGA (and is going to start MEM-LGA) service, and Northwest retaliated with an intention to start DFW-LGA.  Northwest canceled its plans for DFW-LGA before the flights began, opting instead to target Des Moines, Flint, and Madison -- markets that were served exclusively by American.  This explains the second daily DSM-LGA flight.  One of the two will most likely end up dropping the route.  And if American drops it first, Northwest could very well drop it, too, because their starting it is entirely retaliatory to begin with.  These additional flights are actually not welcomed at all, and are certainly not the product of extra campaigning or deal-making on the part of the airport because the airports know Northwest's motives are not to add service, but rather to cause harm to American.

As for the LAX flights, I have no idea what's going on there.  It's one of the those things that doesn't really seem to make sense.  Omaha has over 2.5 times the O/D to the Los Angeles area as Des Moines.  Was Midwest charging some outrageous fares for the nonstop?  Were flight times awkward?  It isn't like connecting via Denver or Phoenix or Salt Lake City is bad, so they could have lost price-sensitive travelers of all types that way.  Factor in the lack of connectivity on both ends and Midwest's general lack of dedication to Omaha and you have a recipe for failure.  Midwest dropped the ball here when it decided to move to Kansas City.  I could definitely see United adding OMA-LAX in Midwest's absence because United has large frequent flyer base in Omaha (I think I've read it's one of the largest or most concentrated or something outside of United's hubs) and it has a large hub which can feed West Coast traffic to and from Omaha as well.
Last edited by omaja on Wed Nov 14, 2007 7:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by joleo »

Omaja...yes all your points are very true, including the United FF base in Omaha.  I just didn't elaborate on everything.  Midwest was killed for a few reasons.

1) Fares were not that unreasonable, just too high to fill 88 seats when competitors are changing $220 r/t.  
2) Only 1 flight a day really kills them, anybody that wants flight time options can't fly them unless they connect in MKE, who wants to do that?  On the other hand, United could make 1 flight work because of the easy and direct connections in Denver.  The hope would be that the flight would be successful enough to add a second flight for max passenger convenience.  For example, OKC-LAX just picked up a second United flight only 18 months after the service began.  On a side note, United carries over 150 passengers per day between the LA basin and Omaha.  How can they not fill two CR7's on this route and not make a killing?
3) Omaha is one of the most loyal cities when it comes to frequent fliers.  It may in fact be the most loyal besides hub cities.  People really stick to their alliances of Skyteam, Oneworld and Star.  This also has a few exceptions but overall this is true.  ie..Midwest to DCA and Frontier (the only reason why they do ok in OMA is because of spill from other airlines being full charging high prices, if you look at seat maps for frontier, they don't fill up until just a week or two before the flight, unlike their competitors)  Knowing this loyalty, a non alliance airlines really needs to stick out new service for some time to develop a FF base before the service will be successful.  OMA-DCA was really empty the first few years it was around, now it's Midwest most profitable route nationwide.  

Aitran could come to Omaha and not face the same hurdles, because they would be catering toward the leisure traffic to Florida, which isn't loyal to an alliance like the business traveler.
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