agerlt wrote:As someone who works with airline management, the chances of Omaha being a focus city for any airline is slim to none. Â Legacy airlines continue to scale back their domestic service, as international routes are the only way they're making money. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â JetBlue has yet to fly to many major central U.S. cities, and when they do expect STL, MCI, MSP, DFW, MKE, and DEN. Â Even Chicago only has flights to NY and LA at this point. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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? Â But it seems like there is a lot of untapped potential. Â 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. Â Last year, Oklahoma City handled 800,000 less passengers than Eppley, yet it has service to 26 cities compared to Omaha’s current 20. Â 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. Â ExpressJet has shown that Omaha-West Coast nonstop works. Â What is so different about these markets? Â Am I completely missing something? Â :?
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. Â JetBlue only serves Chicago from JFK and LGB because of slot restrictions; they applied for eight daily and were only given four. Â 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. Â 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. Â 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. Â AirTran is apparently in the market for a Midwestern hub/focus city, as seen in its recent battle for Midwest Airlines. Â JetBlue has been rumored to be on the search for one as well. Â 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.