2022 Oklahoma City Aviation Thread

[Edmond Hausfrau]

I got upgraded to Premium Class on Alaska for my trip in August to SEA. Anyone flown in those seats? I assume they are very similar to MCE on AA. TIA

I used to fly it for business circa 2019 and the seats were perfect on Alaska, they are my favorite airline besides Lufthansa, but I don't know how it compares to AA business seats

[shartel_ave]

I used to fly it for business circa 2019 and the seats were perfect on Alaska, they are my favorite airline besides Lufthansa, but I don't know how it compares to AA business seats

Has anyone ever flown on Korean Air? By far the nicest airline I've ever experienced and I've flown on tons of airlines and have been all over the world.

Alaska airlines is really nice even coach is not bad

[gopokes88]

June is out btw. Weird month for American

https://flyokc.com/sites/default/fil...nplanement.pdf

[fromdust]

Has anyone ever flown on Korean Air? By far the nicest airline I've ever experienced and I've flown on tons of airlines and have been all over the world.

Alaska airlines is really nice even coach is not bad

Alaska is nice.
Yeah, I think Korean is good, but Emirates and Qatar blow it out of the water.

[HOT ROD]

OKC didn't lose Breeze do to it's business base.

[citywokchinesefood]

Alaska is nice.
Yeah, I think Korean is good, but Emirates and Qatar blow it out of the water.

Air France La Premier is perfection, and the ownership is not nearly as problematic as the ME carriers.

[no1cub17]

Air France La Premier is perfection, and the ownership is not nearly as problematic as the ME carriers.

Nice - I believe you can only redeem Flying Blue points for AF's F cabin right? They don't release any award space to partners? That's awesome

And as far as ownership - meh. Every airline/country has it's issues. I love how the US3 have consistently whined about the government assistance the ME3 receives; as if the US3 haven't gotten bailout after bailout after bailout (even before COVID). Delta is the best at this - whine about the ME3's government subsidies while at the same time cozying up to China Eastern (which is completely government run). Hilarious. Maybe the US3 (and other airlines) ought to actually invest in their products! What a novel concept.

[Paule4ou]

One of the better WN liveries, “Freedom One” (N500WR) will make its way through OKC tomorrow.

Arrival: SAT-OKC, #1291, Arrives at 2:40pm
Depart: OKC-AUS, #621, Departs at 3:25pm

Subject to change of course.

[Jeepnokc]

As I was driving home around 855 pm, I swear i saw a large commercial airliner abort their landing in OKC and take back off circling around to the west. It is possible it could have been another taking off at same time but it really looked like same runway. Couldn't find anything on Flightaware. There were two flights coming in...AA768 from Charlotte and a Frontier flight from denver. Couldn't find a flight path on the Frontier but the AA didn't show it circling. Anyone have a better way to look?

[Anonymous.]

Has OKC - PDX ever had a direct before? I swear it did, but maybe I am crazy.

[chssooner]

Has OKC - PDX ever had a direct before? I swear it did, but maybe I am crazy.

As someone whose mom was from Portland, and we flew there 2x a year for 20 years, we never flew directly there. But I also never booked the trips, so maybe there was a direct option and it was more expensive than flying through Denver or Salt Lake or Dallas.

I would love that direct flight!

[Urbanized]

I’ve flown to PDX a number of times and don’t recall a direct flight ever being an option when booking those, but can’t swear to it.

[BG918]

I could see OKC-PDX on Alaska someday. Allegiant could also be an option. They run nonstop flights from Des Moines to Portland.

[catch22]

Nope. I would say the closest we came was in 2016-2019 when Alaska was making their pre-pandemic run at strengthening PDX to relieve connecting pressure off of SEA and ward off the threat of other airlines growing into the PDX market which was on fire. If the pandemic hadn’t happened, we were probably next in line and just a year or two away from getting a nonstop to PDX on Alaska. I believe in 2018 Omaha got theirs.

Now, Alaska in response to the pandemic and political events which took place recently in Portland, they have had a considerable shelving of plans for their Portland hub. Many destinations have not returned to the schedule and it appears their focus has been to consolidate, retrench, and protect their crown jewel hub in Seattle for the time being.

[Richard at Remax]

I just can't see enough travelers out of OKC that go to PDX. You would think with Alaska it would be either SEA or PDX. Makes more sense to SEA.

[Mississippi Blues]

I’ve been going to Portland for roughly a decade, lived there for 2-3 years, and have made as much as a trip every month in a calendar year at the height of my traveling but I’ve never seen a direct flight between PDX-OKC. I’ve always felt Alaska would be the most likely to break that, especially with PDX being a hub for them, but they haven’t jumped on it so far.

Delta has added a few new routes in the last few years (most if not all have been international) from PDX and with the new gates at Will Rogers it could make sense for Delta to consider that route. From an anecdotal perspective, I normally fly Delta and it seems like there’s always multiple people on the flight between PDX-SLC that are also on the SLC-OKC flight, whichever direction I’m going. With SLC and MSP being pretty natural hubs for them to connect to the PNW and SEA being their PNW hub, I’m not sure they’d mix that up for an OKC-PDX route, but that’s all just me thinking out loud. (out written?)

[catch22]

I just can't see enough travelers out of OKC that go to PDX. You would think with Alaska it would be either SEA or PDX. Makes more sense to SEA.

There's enough to fill an E175. It makes sense when viewed in the pre-pandemic lens that Alaska was operating in at the time. Demand from both SEA and PDX was bursting at the seams. Delta was on a serious, aggressive expansion strategy in Seattle eyeing to kick Alaska in the groin. Alaska was desperate to maintain that lucrative hub. They were moving towards driving increased revenue from Seattle by decreasing connection and focusing on O&D demand, which is generally more profitable. They wanted to move duplicate service and lower yield connections elsewhere, freeing up those seats on the Seattle flights for local, non-connecting traffic.

In a hypothetical OKC/PDX scenario, Alaska could move 35 connection itineraries onto an OKC-PDX flight, which will provide enough butts in seats to justify the OKC-PDX flight along with local demand for that route, and now those 35 seats on the OKC-SEA leg are freed up for local, higher priced fares. This eats into Delta in two ways: it decreases their connection leverage to the region as a whole (via OKC-SLC), and it provides instant growth to Alaska in Seattle without operating any extra planes into the airport. Their costs remain fixed, and their flight schedule can remain flat all the while serving up an additional 20% of seats to local Seattle area travelers. Delta's network at the time could not match a 20% increase in seats without flying in extra airplanes and leasing extra gates. Alaska had a built-in advantage by growing PDX/SEA into a "single hub" with PDX handling the low yield connections, and SEA handling the high-yield premium nonstop traffic to SEA.

This of course, was prior to 2020, and this was the trajectory of their strategy. You multiply those connections from dozens of flights and now Portland has some significant scale, and Seattle has a lot of breathing room to focus on the high yield local traffic.

[BG918]

PDX is building a beautiful new terminal building. I can see Alaska wanting to strengthen its presence there. I don’t know how many business connections there are but Oregon is a big tourist draw especially the wine country.

[catch22]

Right now there is not much urgency on the part of Alaska as demand to PDX still hasn't fully recovered, and Delta is 15-20% smaller overall than they were pre-pandemic and Delta is not actively threatening their SEA operation on the same scale and aggressiveness as prior.

I imagine this is one of those routes OKC will get one of these days, so long as AS remains committed to Portland. They have a long ways to go in building PDX back to its pre-pandemic strength. OKC won't happen ahead of that.

[ksearls]

We go to Oregon at least once a year and would go at least three or four times a year with a direct flight. The last time we went we flew into Eugene which was great. It is close to where we go on the coast and is small and super easy to navigate. Also super close to tons of great wine.

[Urbanized]

We go to Oregon at least once a year and would go at least three or four times a year with a direct flight. The last time we went we flew into Eugene which was great. It is close to where we go on the coast and is small and super easy to navigate. Also super close to tons of great wine.

I flew into/out of Bend a couple of years ago and it was easier than flying into/out of OKC pre-9/11. Tiny airport, would recommend. That said, flying into Bend doesn't help if you are trying to get to the coast. The Oregon coast is the subject of probably half of my daydreams...I would live there if only I could make it work. I'll keep Eugene in mind for future coastal trips. I've been there a couple of times, but I've never flown into that airport.

[Celebrator]

We go to Oregon at least once a year and would go at least three or four times a year with a direct flight. The last time we went we flew into Eugene which was great. It is close to where we go on the coast and is small and super easy to navigate. Also super close to tons of great wine.

Will be trying EUG for the first time for our annual Oregon Coast trip in September. PDX is fine, but Portland itself has become such a bombed out shell of itself, not to mention crowded that we thought we'd give EUG a try with Southwest staring service there late last summer.

[damonsmuz]

United is offering nonstop service from Oklahoma City to Lincoln, Nebraska on September 16 and return September 18. It's an EMB175 and departs at 4pm and leaves Sunday around 9am.

United announced 120 new flights for this fall for college football. It appears this is the only "odd flight" they're flying out of OKC this fall.

[no1cub17]

United is offering nonstop service from Oklahoma City to Lincoln, Nebraska on September 16 and return September 18. It's an EMB175 and departs at 4pm and leaves Sunday around 9am.

United announced 120 new flights for this fall for college football. It appears this is the only "odd flight" they're flying out of OKC this fall.

Cool add, would have expected something 737/A320 sized though! But UA is probably just short on crews and planes like everyone else.

[damonsmuz]

Question: I was looking at flights schedules for Delta and saw that they're sending 5 mainline a day on a A320 and then a CRJ900 to Atlanta. Looking at the timetable, the CRJ900 flight leaves Atlanta around 9pm and then sits overnight and doesn't depart until 530pm the next day. Does the plane really sit here for 19 hours?

I looked at other routes into OKC that Delta flies a 900 on and they're all in and then out the next morning (SLC and MSP)

Just wondering why Delta would have a plane sit here that long, unless it's going in to the Skywest hanger for something. Someone help me understand this