OKC/Will Rogers Air Service Discussion

[SkyWestOKC]

Effective July 1, 2011. Delta will add another mainline flight to Atlanta, bringing the total to two. Both operated by MD88. (142 seats each)

The mainline schedule, as of now, subject to change.

OKC-ATL
Depart...Arrive...Aircraft
540am...857am...MD88
1010am...113pm...MD88

ATL-OKC (the return)
820am...934am...MD88
830pm...950pm...MD88

Hopefully this sticks, we'll find out in the next few schedule runs whether or not the change will stay, fingers crossed.

[OUman]

Two M88 departures 10 minutes apart on ATL-OKC? That's strange.

[BoulderSooner]

Two M88 departures 10 minutes apart on ATL-OKC? That's strange.

or 12 hours and 10 min apart

[OUman]

Ahh, thanks for the correction BoulderSooner, driving in the Houston area for the first time probably had more of an effect than I thought. Too bad I can't edit my original post.

[brianinok]

Looks like Delta is cutting flights at Memphis. I wonder if we will lose those flights?

[venture]

Looks like we will be losing one round trip to Atlanta on Delta starting this summer. Also United is cutting back to just one flight to LAX.

[ljbab728]

Looks like Delta is cutting flights at Memphis. I wonder if we will lose those flights?

I doubt that we will lose flights. It will mainly impact us by having fewer options for connections into the cities it does cut.

[ljbab728]

Looks like we will be losing one round trip to Atlanta on Delta starting this summer. Also United is cutting back to just one flight to LAX.

That doesn't surprise me about United. Since American has also started nonstop service, I'm not sure we can currently support more than two nonstops per day. Load factors could change that decision, however.

[SkyWestOKC]

Looks like we will be losing one round trip to Atlanta on Delta starting this summer.

Well, we are staying at 5x, with 2x mainline, 3x RJ. They aren't selling the 6th rt to ATL that was in the dummy schedule. We are still gaining capacity since we will have 2 of those 5 being mainline.

[OUman]

Actually it's Cincinnati that's likely to be dropped as a hub. The entire Comair terminal (C gates) has already been mothballed. I don't think having three hubs within 400 miles of each other is a great idea for any airline, something's got to go.

On a side note, I flew down to the Houston/SE Texas area this past weekend to attend a wedding, had my first experience with Colgan Air and the Q400. Colgan's not as bad as many people say it is, at least from my experience, although it was my first time and I wasn't checking in any luggage, and of course it was a short nonstop to IAH and back. The Q400 on the other hand was not as "Q" as expected. The ATR 72-500 is a better airplane in terms of cabin noise and vibration.

It's good to see another airline having enough confidence to have mainliners at OKC, other than the usual AA, WN, UA and CO. Hopefully the trend continues. The airport was probably the busiest I have seen in quite a while when I left on Friday.

[Oil Capital]

Actually it's Cincinnati that's likely to be dropped as a hub. The entire Comair terminal (C gates) has already been mothballed. I don't think having three hubs within 400 miles of each other is a great idea for any airline, something's got to go.

Interesting. I had not realized Concourse C had been closed. It turns out they have also closed Concourse A and now operate totally out of Concourse B at CVG.

On a related note, Delta just announced last week that they are cutting flights at their Memphis hub by 25% and are considering consolidating from three concourses to one at Memphis as well.

[venture]

CVG is pretty depressing to see now. Not as bad as PIT though. That use to be my favorite airport to connect through, but now it is a ghost town.

[OUman]

^I've connected at CVG four times in the past, back when it was a pretty big hub for DL/DL Conx, namely in '02 and '04 (CVG had international service to/from Paris CDG, London Gatwick, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and a bunch of Canadian and Caribbean destinations). It is a connecting passenger's favourite because of its layout, and its size, big enough for a hub, but small enough for most passengers who don't like the likes of ATL and ORD. Also has good food options. Too bad it's losing out, that fourth runway will probably end up like the one at STL. Hopefully some other carrier can one day get into the CVG market for expansion and set up a hub there in the future at some point. Who knows.

[venture]

CVG's biggest issue is lack of O&D. The city's population I believe finally dropped below 300k and the metro area isn't terribly big. It was just a great connecting spot to move people through the midwest. I want to say though that they were looking at 80% of traffic was connecting, which kills a hub's profitability.

[OUman]

^True. But the catchment area of CVG is still above 2 million, but like you said, O&D still is the deciding factor. Still, 60+ destinations for a city that has less than 300,000 proper, that's not too shabby for today's market conditions.