Omaha Eppley Airfield - DISCUSSION

[skinzfan23]

I just flew out of and into Eppley last week. Despite seeing construction almost everywhere, it was still easy to move around and no issues.

Same here, we flew about 3-4 weeks ago with no problems.

[Brad]

I just flew out of and into Eppley last week. Despite seeing construction almost everywhere, it was still easy to move around and no issues.

Same here, we flew about 3-4 weeks ago with no problems.

Same here. But if you get the furthest south Southwest gate, you sure get you steps in!

[almighty_tuna]

They are working on the central utility plant (at least I think so based on this video)

Ahh, I'm all kinds of messed up on my timelines.

[skinzfan23]

Curious to see what the July numbers are, they should be coming out soon.

[Bob from Omaha]

Curious to see what the July numbers are, they should be coming out soon.

Typically the monthly board meeting is around the 20th of the month. They post stats anywhere from the next day to a week or so later.

[skinzfan23]

The last few months, they were available by the 16-18th of the following month.

[Mr.Nuke]

The last few months, they were available by the 16-18th of the following month.

Like Bob said it is highly correlated to the board meeting. The stats are out usually the day of the meeting or the day following. There hasn't been a board meeting scheduled as far as we know yet for the month per their website.

The notice and agenda is usually posted roughly a week or so before the meeting. Presumably that is the required notification period to the public that a meeting is occurring. If the website is up to date, and they're pretty good at updating it, I'm not expecting statistics for at least a week at this point.

[Mr.Nuke]

And on cue, the board meeting will be next Tuesday. Statistics to follow.
https://www.flyoma.com/wp-content/uploa ... -13-24.pdf

[jjjjhskr]

I’m kind of surprised that nobody has posted that Southwest is adding seasonal Saturday flights between Omaha and Austin

[Louie]

I’m kind of surprised that nobody has posted that Southwest is adding seasonal Saturday flights between Omaha and Austin

Bob and Mr. Nuke brought it up on the last page at the end of july.

[Brad]

What a view. This thing is moving right along.

Agreed, although this is just a small first step. Once this section is complete the next step is the new concourse which will span the entire section between the current concourses. I would assume that section is probably late next year though.

Are you sure they are not starting on the concourse too? I was looking at this aerial again and noticed the drill sitting by the south concourse and I see the cones on the roof of the south concourse?

GU3bx2-Aag-AERJEL.jpg

[GenX]

When I flew out to NYC on Saturday I noticed they’re putting up what looks to be a red tower crane.

[joleo]

United began OMA-SFO yesterday. I was hoping for a news article that I could link, surprised there was nothing.

Goes to double daily this fall, then back to single daily for the winter. (Except for several weeks around Christmas, double daily). All Embraer 76 regional jets with 12 first class seats. Best flight around to get a free upgrade on if you have United status with the Economy to First Class seat ratio!

Yesterday and today SFO-OMA flights were almost full. The OMA-SFO yesterday was only about half full.

[Mr.Nuke]

July up 6.7% for both the month and the year. Just a shade under 500,000 for the month and a little over 15,000 off last month's all-time record.
https://www.flyoma.com/wp-content/uploa ... istics.pdf

[Bob from Omaha]

July up 6.7% for both the month and the year. Just a shade under 500,000 for the month and a little over 15,000 off last month's all-time record.
https://www.flyoma.com/wp-content/uploa ... istics.pdf

Delta & United both down for the month. UA 9.3% down for the year. Southwest up over 11% for the month and year.

[Mr.Nuke]

Delta & United both down for the month. UA 9.3% down for the year. Southwest up over 11% for the month and year.

United was basically inline with expectations based on their seats. Delta was a bit of a surprise, but I haven't been watching what they're doing in any where near as much detail as United.

[Bob from Omaha]

Frisco is seasonal as far as I know. EWR and IAD and the two hubs UA doesn't serve from OMA. They list LAX as a hub. I think UA used to fly to EWR from OMA.

[Bob from Omaha]

For what it's worth, if OMA keeps up its growth this year it could be looking at somewhere around 5.25 million this year.

[Bearcat06]

For what it's worth, if OMA keeps up its growth this year it could be looking at somewhere around 5.25 million this year.

I like 5.362 million, but I'm okay with splitting our numbers.

[Greg S]

July up 6.7% for both the month and the year. Just a shade under 500,000 for the month and a little over 15,000 off last month's all-time record.
https://www.flyoma.com/wp-content/uploa ... istics.pdf

I flew in June, July and again this month. This doesn't surprise me. Was a noticeable drop from June to July (and earlier this month). June seemed crazy between crowds in airport and parking. More normal in July and again in August.


Greg

[Omaha Cowboy]

I’m flying non stop Omaha-Dallas in September on Southwest. Got a great price for my round trip ticket at $156.00. If I’m flying in to Dallas, I MUCH prefer Love field over DFW…

Ciao..LiO…Peace

[nebugeater]

I’m flying non stop Omaha-Dallas in September on Southwest. Got a great price for my round trip ticket at $156.00. If I’m flying in to Dallas, I MUCH prefer Love field over DFW…

Ciao..LiO…Peace

It must be for the weekend of September 15th or 22nd. Those are the only two September home Cowboy games!

[Greg S]

I’m flying non stop Omaha-Dallas in September on Southwest. Got a great price for my round trip ticket at $156.00. If I’m flying in to Dallas, I MUCH prefer Love field over DFW…

Ciao..LiO…Peace

It must be for the weekend of September 15th or 22nd. Those are the only two September home Cowboy games!

I like Love Field for Dallas too. Usually hit the Whataburger in the airport if I have time. I also like Midway for Chicago.

Greg

[Renovator2559]

I’m flying non stop Omaha-Dallas in September on Southwest. Got a great price for my round trip ticket at $156.00. If I’m flying in to Dallas, I MUCH prefer Love field over DFW…

Ciao..LiO…Peace

Never been to Love field, but that's mostly because my connecting flights always go to DFW.

[Omaha Cowboy]

I’m flying non stop Omaha-Dallas in September on Southwest. Got a great price for my round trip ticket at $156.00. If I’m flying in to Dallas, I MUCH prefer Love field over DFW…

Ciao..LiO…Peace

It must be for the weekend of September 15th or 22nd. Those are the only two September home Cowboy games!

I like Love Field for Dallas too. Usually hit the Whataburger in the airport if I have time. I also like Midway for Chicago.

Greg

Ha! I’m actually flying down to visit family for a few days..But the Cowboys are playing at home the week I’m going down- I won’t go to the game, but I’ll watch it at the Cowboys HQ’s- The Star in Frisco, TX ..

Oh and Whataburger- can’t wait to chomp down on a burger or 2 for sure!…

Ciao..LiO…Peace

[Omaha Cowboy]

I’m flying non stop Omaha-Dallas in September on Southwest. Got a great price for my round trip ticket at $156.00. If I’m flying in to Dallas, I MUCH prefer Love field over DFW…

Ciao..LiO…Peace

Never been to Love field, but that's mostly because my connecting flights always go to DFW.

Once you fly into Love Field, you’ll never miss DFW…

Ciao..LiO…Peace

[lmdramos]

I see Delta is going from 3 flights on the OMA-LGA route down to 1 flight a day in late December, before increase back up to 2 flights a day in early January. Hate to see the Delta cutbacks, but there is a lot of competition on the that route from American with their 2 daily flights to LGA as well.

[Bob from Omaha]

That brings up a point.

EWR, JFK, BWI & IAD. OMA had service to EWR not terribly long ago & a long time ago had service to IAD. ALL four are major hubs & while Nuke might have PDEW regarding them I think OMA should work on establishing service to them.

[FishFighter92]

That brings up a point.

EWR, JFK, BWI & IAD. OMA had service to EWR not terribly long ago & a long time ago had service to IAD. ALL four are major hubs & while Nuke might have PDEW regarding them I think OMA should work on establishing service to them.

A lot of connections though, so PDEW won't tell the whole story. (I think that's how that works)

[GenX]

A couple photos of progress on the CUP from this morning.

[skinzfan23]

Wow, they are flying on the part of the project.

[nativeomahan]

Wow, they are flying on the part of the project.

Umm. I guess that’s only appropriate.

[almighty_tuna]

Just flew back from San Diego (and boy my arms are tired) and it's remarkable how current-Eppley feels like an 80s basement. Can't wait until BuildOMA is complete.

Question for the airline stats crew though. When we arrived last night (~8p) on Southwest the pilot's "welcome to Omaha" announcement also included a line for passengers connecting to another flight; I didn't think we actually hosted layovers. When BuildOMA is complete 1) will we have connecting flights, 2) are they lumped in the general passenger PDEW numbers, 3) are passengers with Omaha origin/destination tracked separately from those just passing through to a different final destination, and 4) if we do become a mid-continent layover spot, is there an significant bump expected in PDEW numbers?

[damonhynes]

Question for the airline stats crew though. When we arrived last night (~8p) on Southwest the pilot's "welcome to Omaha" announcement also included a line for passengers connecting to another flight; I didn't think we actually hosted layovers.

I heard the same script on UA from IAH Friday. Technically, I suppose one could cobble an IAH-OMA-DEN routing if you tried hard enough and price was no object, but...

[Mr.Nuke]

That brings up a point.

EWR, JFK, BWI & IAD. OMA had service to EWR not terribly long ago & a long time ago had service to IAD. ALL four are major hubs & while Nuke might have PDEW regarding them I think OMA should work on establishing service to them.

EWR had been served by Continental and United before it for a long time up until 2022. EWR is getting dropped seasonally from MCI this winter from Mid-December to April as of right now. If they're not going to fly it from MCI they're not in a rush to bring it back to OMA either. PDEW for EWR was 25 in Q1.

JFK PDEW was 2.5 people in Q1. That isn't happening either. LGA was 118.

BWI was 25, DCA 120, and IAD was 11. BWI doesn't help that the airline that would be flying it needs to fill a 737 and is already serving DCA. IAD would only happen if United wanted to re-establish a direct connection to an East coast hub and chose to do it here instead of EWR.

A lot of connections though, so PDEW won't tell the whole story. (I think that's how that works)

Pretty much with these 4 specific airports. Southwest has a large BWI operation that could connect people, EWR and IAD are United hubs, and JFK would allow some domestic connections, and many international connections. Any decision to add service from OMA to one of those 4 airports would be relying and factoring connectivity. I still think PDEW can be instructive in cases like this though.

If you are Southwest and know the market for Washington D.C. was roughly 150 passengers, and that you have 50% of the market, that there are 25 passengers daily going to BWI; you know you are going to have trouble filling a plane to BWI connections or not. And at that point if you are relying on connections ,you are probably off letting people go through MDW or STL on your existing service for those roughly 12 passengers each day flying you to BWI.

[Bob from Omaha]

Just a couple of observations, and a comment or two.

Let's get this out of the way right up front. A majority of the time I yield to Nuke with regard to air travel.

Now, Eppley has grown from 3.5 million pax per year to over 5 million. Its destination count has grown as well, including flights to both coasts. OMA used to be lucky if it offered non stops to 15-17 destinations and none on the coasts. DSM had maybe 12 destinations. Now both have around 30 non stop destinations. People are flying more and more often. Same with DSM & KCI and lots of other airports. Substantial growth. PDEW measures final destination, correct? So 12 pax to BWI doesn't tell the whole story, right? And PDEW isn't static. It's fluid. It fluctuates. Right? There might be some airports where the PDEW hovers around the same number but I'd bet there are others where it's fluid.

Let's have a look at Grand Rapids Airport for a bit of comparison. I'm not saying GRR is a peer airport. Just an example. GRR has non stop flights on non Allegiant airlines to: BWI on Southwest, Newark on United, Philadelphia on American, DCA on American. No Dulles and Boston only on Allegiant and I don't count that. GRR is growing at a double digit rate this year and just did an addition where it went from 15 gates to 22 and they have plans to add even more when the time is right. It's a very nice airport. I'm not sure why the expansion when they haven't yet cracked 4 million pax but hey, why not?

I'm simply saying that while Grand Rapids is marginally larger population wise than Omaha it has flights to some other hubs that Omaha doesn't. I'd imagine that there are other similar cities that don't compare as favorably to OMA. I still believe that with the right timing and promotion OMA could support flights to some if not all of the following: Boston, Newark, Philly, BWI and Dulles. All are international gateways. I'm not offering any guarantees and I admit I could be wrong.

[Mr.Nuke]

Question for the airline stats crew though. When we arrived last night (~8p) on Southwest the pilot's "welcome to Omaha" announcement also included a line for passengers connecting to another flight; I didn't think we actually hosted layovers.

More than likely this was a flight crew at the end of long day that forgot where they were at. In your specific case here, at 8ish on a Saturday night, your plane and every other plane was going to spend the night in Omaha so there literally were no flights to connect to.

Now the connecting traffic question is a little more difficult to answer and I think something might have potentially changed recently...

When BuildOMA is complete 1) will we have connecting flights, 2) are they lumped in the general passenger PDEW numbers, 3) are passengers with Omaha origin/destination tracked separately from those just passing through to a different final destination, and 4) if we do become a mid-continent layover spot, is there an significant bump expected in PDEW numbers?

1) Probably, and I think we actually might now. Fellow board user joleo had always contended that Southwest would allow actual connections at an airport that had a full service sit down restaurant. This is something Eppley obviously lacks, but will get in the terminal upgrade.

There are likely some connecting passengers already. How many? No clue... For years Southwest has allowed through connections at Eppley if it is the same plane i.e. if the plane is going to do DEN-->OMA-->MDW someone in DEN wanting go to MDW could book the flight through OMA as a 1 stop with no plane change. In Southwest's case on flights like this the passenger doesn't even have to get off the plane in OMA.

I hadn't looked for awhile before today, but I almost instantly found an actual plane change connecting flight on Southwest. So i'm not sure what if anything changed regarding joleo's restaurant policy with them or when it might have changed.

This was from a dummy booking for a ticket from Las Vegas to St. Louis.
United will also allow connections through OMA on their website, but they're priced in a way to make them look really unattractive.

A dummy booking from SFO to ORD

How meaningful are these connections right now and going forward? I'm honestly not sure. I would be curious to know how many are happening now for starters. I doubt it is all that significant. Like I said United is basically begging you not to do it, and on Southwest even where it is offered it probably isn't going to be typically anywhere near your best option i.e. on that LAS-STL there are 5 non-stop flights plenty of other options for connecting too, etc. Lastly the other factor is our spot geographically. For SW specifically, we're in the middle of two very big operations for them in DEN and MDW, one pretty big one in STL, and one growing but still way bigger than us in MCI. You are going to be much more likely to go through one of those airports just based on the number of flights and destinations they see versus OMA.

2) An actual connecting passenger i.e. got off a plane and went to another gate would look like a regular passenger on Eppley's monthly stats. I'm honestly not sure how the through passengers on the same plane for SW are handled.

3) Yes. PDEW is the measure for Origin and Destination travel. No connecting passengers would show up here, because all it is tracking is how many people are coming or going out of Eppley as their starting or final destination, hence Passengers Daily Each Way (PDEW).

4) So no here because it doesn't impact PDEW at all. It would be a bump in overall passengers for the airport. Like I said though there are other factors at play that I think make this scenario unlikely in general too for the operational reasons mentioned above.

The one thing where connecting passengers come into play in relation to PDEW is the following. OMA's PDEW with SAN was 77 in one of the quarters last year. Theoretically if you were starting to get connecting passengers, you would be more likely to potentially see some of these borderline routes served as you could back-fill with connecting traffic if timed right.

[almighty_tuna]

Thanks for the detailed answer, Nuke! Your expertise is always appreciated!

[ProgKingHughesker]

Question for the airline stats crew though. When we arrived last night (~8p) on Southwest the pilot's "welcome to Omaha" announcement also included a line for passengers connecting to another flight; I didn't think we actually hosted layovers.

I heard the same script on UA from IAH Friday. Technically, I suppose one could cobble an IAH-OMA-DEN routing if you tried hard enough and price was no object, but...

Due to weather shenanigans once when traveling for business my dad actually had to connect in Wichita of all places to get from ORD to IAH on United. I assume because he had really good status with them at the time they just found the two flights with empty seats that would get him to Houston fastest

[damonhynes]

Due to weather shenanigans once when traveling for business my dad actually had to connect in Wichita of all places to get from ORD to IAH on United. I assume because he had really good status with them at the time they just found the two flights with empty seats that would get him to Houston fastest

!