2020 Oklahoma City Aviation Thread

[gopokes88]

Chicken and egg scenario. Airlines are afraid to add capacity, but the lack of capacity is negatively affecting demand in the form of schedule effectiveness and network robustness. At some point they need to return services to something a little more usable than what is out there currently. AA and WN are the two that seem to be going that route, while UA and DL operate a skeleton schedule.

I'm starting to fly again, and once again AA is the best for schedule, price and availability. Glad they've doubled down. No mainline service yet but I'm doing my part to try and get that back.

[catch22]

I'm starting to fly again, and once again AA is the best for schedule, price and availability. Glad they've doubled down. No mainline service yet but I'm doing my part to try and get that back.

Just curious are your trips for business or leisure? If the former what is your company's policy on booking premium cabin or premium economy right now? If you don't mind me prying.

[gopokes88]

Just curious are your trips for business or leisure? If the former what is your company's policy on booking premium cabin or premium economy right now? If you don't mind me prying.

Business. I’m allowed to book first. I think this trip to PHX was round trip like $400 in first.

[catch22]

Cool. That's a good price. Thanks

[Jeepnokc]

Cool. That's a good price. Thanks

We looked for tickets to Harlingen, TX or Brownsville and everything we found was $500 plus for coach (United or SW). AA was over $1500. These were midweek tickets but only 7-9 days out. For a $1000 plus, we are driving and get the added bonus of taking the Dane with us.

[shawnw]

I've flown into Harlingen. Very limited service there even during normal times, could that be a factor in the price?

[catch22]

We looked for tickets to Harlingen, TX or Brownsville and everything we found was $500 plus for coach (United or SW). AA was over $1500. These were midweek tickets but only 7-9 days out. For a $1000 plus, we are driving and get the added bonus of taking the Dane with us.

That's pretty steep, bringing the dog along is always worth it. I find myself driving more just for that reason. Plus flying has turned into a huge pain in the ass - literally, the seats are getting worse every year.

I've flown into Harlingen. Very limited service there even during normal times, could that be a factor in the price?

probably, plus texas and florida are leading the domestic demand recovery right now, specifically people flying to those places. most of the country's capacity increases the past month have been to vacation points in those states. that rush of demand can't help with pricing either.

[Jeepnokc]

Stronger mandatory mask rules. Wonder if other airlines will follow

https://hub.united.com/2020-06-15-un...646175010.html

[jdizzle]

American Airlines switched my connection from LAX to DFW without me knowing :/ thankfully it is in August, but it would have been nice to know, since I had originally paid for seat upgrades.

[brianinok]

Stronger mandatory mask rules. Wonder if other airlines will follow

https://hub.united.com/2020-06-15-un...646175010.html

American started the policy yesterday. https://thepointsguy.com/news/united...sk-flying-ban/

I think I also saw where Delta joined the group late yesterday but I don't know their start date of enforcement.

[gopokes88]

May numbers running pretty late this month

[catch22]

Wonder if they forgot to post it. Usually airlines report previous month traffic about 10 days into the month. Maybe they are working from home so that has routines for posting stuff like that out of whack.

[gopokes88]

We know they read this thread so they'll see it and get it up

[gopokes88]

Still no May statistics. Weird

[catch22]

UA just loaded Aug schedule

OKC-
DEN: 2x E75
IAH: 2x E75 1x 73G
ORD: 2x E75

[gopokes88]

That more or less than July

[catch22]

That more or less than July

Same except for the mainline to IAH is a E75 in July.

[catch22]

Still no May statistics. Weird

maybe we will get May and June together

[Jersey Boss]

maybe we will get May and June together

How common does this occurance happen?

[catch22]

How common does this occurance happen?

I've never seen a traffic release occur past the 20th of the month for WRWA. Some airports don't release traffic data until 60-90 days after the month ended, so we are somewhat spoiled here. Airlines usually close out their internal traffic reports by the 7th or 8th (believe it or not in the digital age there is still quite a lot of manual reconciliation of internal stats) and post their monthly systemwide traffic reports to investors by the 10th. I'm not as familiar with how it is distributed to the airports, but it usually seems WRWA puts out their numbers between the 10th and 15th so I assume they receive more granular traffic data from the airlines when the report is generated for investors, this probably has to do with fee collection by the various airports.

We are also blessed that WRWA breaks down the total by marketing carrier instead of operating carrier - they used to not (they would only list total passengers) until I inquired years ago and they started doing it. Some airports release data based on operating carrier which really makes it more difficult. For example they will SkyWest as their own carrier - good luck figuring out how many of those SkyWest passengers were on United, American, Delta, or Alaska.

WRWA really comes through top notch for easily accessible and digestible stats, as well as timely (except for now ).

[HangryHippo]

United has some big layoffs coming per reports. Catch, any word?

[catch22]

United has some big layoffs coming per reports. Catch, any word?

You know as much as I do

[catch22]

AA is ending OKC-PHL. Appears to be permanent.

The good news is they had quite a bit of data on this route in the pre-covid world. So once traffic recovers I don't see why this route won't come back. Transatlantic demand is decimated for the foreseeable future, and PHL was AA's main transatlantic connecting hub. This isn't surprising.

[gopokes88]

Yep. This is a massive hole to dig out of.

Traffic will fall off a cliff in September. All four of my American flights were packed with tourists this week. Very little business traffic.

[jdizzle]

OKC picked the wrong year(s) to be productive. The new CC has a chance to fail, and they are expanding the airport, when airlines are shrinking routes everywhere. This is not an OKC issue alone, of course. Just the timing couldn't be worse. But that is OKC's thing.