2023 Oklahoma City Aviation Thread

[catch22]

If you've ever watched Shark Tank, the airline revenue management department is Mr. Kevin O'Leary. They don't care about the story to get there or if they are selling rubber dog turds, they only care about the bottom line when evaluating a market. If any of the Big 3 could make a 15% return on every seat put in the OKC market you'd see a much different level of service. Historically, OKC has been a 5-10% margin market, which is even somewhat recent. That's not terrible, but it's not exactly floating high on everyone's list. For context for United, systemwide margin is 9%. Anything that can pull greater than 9% is likely to be grown, anything under 9% and that capacity is at risk to be moved to somewhere it can earn better than 9%. If you are running a station at 5-10% you need some really good justification to keep growing it when there are better options out there.

A 30-day run (round trip) for a 737-900 on OKC-DEN costs roughly 1 million dollars. At 100%LF all 30 days you need to average $85.70 per seat to break even. Doesn't sound terrible until you factor in that is only 1 leg of a trip. Say you are selling a bunch of junk fares to Las Vegas, Sacramento, and Seattle at $165 each to fill this thing up. Your fare-contribution is cut in half on connections, so OKC-DEN is earning $82.50 and DEN-LAS is earning $82.50. Those $3/seat you are losing on your lowest fares now need to be made up in the higher fare classes which OKC is highly sensitive to. As a market analyst you run a high risk of only selling out the junk fares, and the "premium swing" doesn't materialize closer to departure. You get a few higher-fare tickets sold but not enough of them. You have now sold 120 out of 179 seats at an average contribution of $115. It is departure time and you've spent $15,300 in expenses to run today's flight and only brought in $13,800 in revenue. You've got a problem if this happens every day, or even many days per month as the "good days" may not bring up the losses.

179 seats x 500 miles x 17.14 cost per seat mile / 100 (cents) = $15,340 average cost for OKC-DEN 737-900
$15,340 / 179 seats = $85.70

You can stick a 76-seater on it and know with good confidence every seat will likely be sold. Your 76 seater costs $6,513 to run in the same scenario. You have a limited supply of seats so you can forget selling some junk fares, and concentrate on some higher yield fare buckets. Just for fairness we will keep the fare-contribution the same as the previous example, $115. You bring in $8,740 in revenue on $6,513 of expenses. With the lack of low-fare buckets you may actually bring in a higher yield and easily double your money on the right days.

76 seats x 500 miles x 17.14 cost per seat mile / 100 cents = 6,513

These are the things to consider. AA's formula may be more forgiving and/or their product stimulates the market in ways UA and DL do not. Maybe they are losing money in OKC but it is a corporate strategy to hold onto interior markets close to DFW. Who knows. It's working for them but other airlines struggle in the OKC market with larger jets. At the end it all comes down to money.

[catch22]

I promise it is nothing personal. You can have a very friendly airport director that sends hot donuts to the network planning office every Monday. But someone still needs to buy those last 50 seats every day that are making me lose money on this mainline trip. Someone has to sit in those seats and pay more than $82.50 average contribution. If you don't have that, I'm putting the airplane somewhere else that will. Because I want to keep my job. That's what is going on in your network planning office. They work in cubicles crunching numbers to put airplanes where they will consistently make money. All day 9-5 they are looking at what routes are making money and which ones aren't.

[Bits_Of_Real_Panther]

I have flown this route religiously for years. The current situation has NEGATIVELY induced demand it is so bad, for me and those I know who use it. For several years it fluctuated between 3-4 daily, depending on the day of the week. This was after the Delta merger. It wasn't until 2018 or so that Delta started to reduce it to about 2 per day much of the year. It has not returned to more than 1 flight per day since the pandemic started. It's very annoying.

Yeah I remember taking a fall 2019 Thursday flight around 2pm to MSP, I was meeting up with family and friends for the Thursday night NFL game.

Timing worked great, took the light rail from the airport to downtown hotel to drop off luggage and met for happy hour before heading to the game.

[chssooner]

I promise it is nothing personal. You can have a very friendly airport director that sends hot donuts to the network planning office every Monday. But someone still needs to buy those last 50 seats every day that are making me lose money on this mainline trip. Someone has to sit in those seats and pay more than $82.50 average contribution. If you don't have that, I'm putting the airplane somewhere else that will. Because I want to keep my job. That's what is going on in your network planning office. They work in cubicles crunching numbers to put airplanes where they will consistently make money. All day 9-5 they are looking at what routes are making money and which ones aren't.

Then apparently OKC doesn't make many airlines a lot of money. Losing multiple frequencies and routes over 3 years, more than comparably sized airports, must show OKC is a money pit. Not sure why that is.

I hope it changes.

[no1cub17]

I know. Just seems OKC is the first to go. And every plane out of OKC is packed or oversold. So they either don't care about OKC, or aren't being properly informed about the market. I fly 5 or 6 times a year. Every single flight I am on is packed. Most oversold with people on standby. I know, anecdotal evidence. But OKC should be getting more mainline service, not less, or having flights to hubs cut.

Maybe I just want too much for our "big-league city".

There aren't enough pilots. Not for the regionals, not for mainline. Hence air service is still not back to pre-pandemic levels. Unfortunately RJ routes like OKC-MSP and OKC-DTW are low hanging fruit. AA, for all they've added here, still have not resumed routes like OKC-PHL, and can't sustain OKC-MIA year-round.

I would love my hometown AZO to be back to 4x daily ORD on AA/UA and 4-5x daily DTW + 2x daily MSP on DL the way it was pre-pandemic. But that's just not realistic at this time, or ever unfortunately.

And just because there are people on the standby list doesn't at all mean that the flight is oversold. People can be on the standby list due to IRROPS, or they could be elites trying to catch an earlier flight, or they could be non-revs (just a few examples). So yeah, anecdotal evidence is just that. I'm sure if DL thought they could profitably fly OKC-MSP or OKC-DTW mainline, they would.

[brianinok]

I promise it is nothing personal. You can have a very friendly airport director that sends hot donuts to the network planning office every Monday. But someone still needs to buy those last 50 seats every day that are making me lose money on this mainline trip. Someone has to sit in those seats and pay more than $82.50 average contribution. If you don't have that, I'm putting the airplane somewhere else that will. Because I want to keep my job. That's what is going on in your network planning office. They work in cubicles crunching numbers to put airplanes where they will consistently make money. All day 9-5 they are looking at what routes are making money and which ones aren't.

Seem like there should be some middle ground. Why is UA consistently asking me to pay $400+ to fly to Denver on a CRJ-200? That's not $82.50. And it's significantly more for the non-CRJ-200 flights. Those are the economy seats, which I don't buy. ....driving to Denver again.

[gopokes88]

Some summer routes getting cut simply to avoid delay meltdowns.

It’s far more complicated than anything okc does.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/06/why-...er-planes.html


Now that we have the new gate maybe we get an up-gauge on American for an LGA route or something? I know okc-Dallas has a few A321s on it.

[gopokes88]

If you’ll just switch to AA you’ll have a deep love for OKC’s airport.

[catch22]

Seem like there should be some middle ground. Why is UA consistently asking me to pay $400+ to fly to Denver on a CRJ-200? That's not $82.50. And it's significantly more for the non-CRJ-200 flights. Those are the economy seats, which I don't buy. ....driving to Denver again.

I see plenty of one way fares on UA to Denver for around $100, which after taxes is probably about $80 one way. Probably losing money or breaking even on those fares. How far out are you booking? What days of the week?

[brianinok]

I see plenty of one way fares on UA to Denver for around $100, which after taxes is probably about $80 one way. Probably losing money or breaking even on those fares. How far out are you booking? What days of the week?

Typically 2-5 months out. I rarely wait until the last minute. I'd rather cancel and have a credit than book at the last minute, though it happens on occasion. Planes are so full waiting until the last minute is a loser for me. I book all days of the week, as they're for various reasons. But it has to fit within my schedule so I don't have 100% flexibility. I'm looking at a late June to early July to DEN right now. I realize that's around the 4th, but surely that doesn't jack up every fare for weeks on end. Maybe it does when your capacity is as low as OKC....

[catch22]

I see. I wish UA would add some capacity. I remember when we flew a 757 on some peak days to DEN. I agree with everyone that it is frustrating -- I find it very frustrating because it makes it difficult for me to non-rev to OKC when every single seat seems to be full, all the time -- so more than anyone on this forum I wish UA would add some actual capacity back to the market. But there are actual market forces at work the number 1 being the pilot shortage.

I can recall from memory that July and August 2012, 2013 were probably the highest capacity months to Denver, with plenty of junk fares to spare on all 3 carriers.

F9 was 3x daily A319
WN was 3x daily 73G
UA had 6x daily mix of RJ and 2x mainline.

[Richard at Remax]

Not us but interesting

https://thepointsguy.com/news/breeze...nds-26-routes/

[shai2022]

Looks like nonstop to Miami on AA is year-round now, no longer seasonal.

https://www.travelagentcentral.com/t...tes-from-miami

[Richard at Remax]

Nice!

[brianinok]

Right now the OKC-MIA route is Saturday only. The article says it is daily. I hope as part of this change it is going back to daily. That would be helpful.

[BG918]

Right now the OKC-MIA route is Saturday only. The article says it is daily. I hope as part of this change it is going back to daily. That would be helpful.

Yeah Saturday-only is really only good for people doing cruise trip vacations. TUL-MIA is still Sat only on AA, hopeful it goes daily as well. MIA is our only non-stop connection to South Florida.

[gopokes88]

Yeah Saturday-only is really only good for people doing cruise trip vacations. TUL-MIA is still Sat only on AA, hopeful it goes daily as well. MIA is our only non-stop connection to South Florida.

Huge for Caribbean travel as well. Will help the bleed to Dallas a little bit.

[PoliSciGuy]

Will Rogers Airport had its busiest March ever:

Will Rogers World Airport (OKC)had a record for passenger traffic for March 2023. For the month OKC had 391,389 passengers which is 22% higher than 2022 and 10.6% higher than the previous record in March 2019. There were, also a record 980,188 passengers that flew in and out of OKC from January through March. So far this year, WRWA has outperformed the airport’s previous record set in 2019 by 44,845.

Seems likely that this year will be a record-breaker overall

[gopokes88]

Holy United
https://flyokc.com/sites/default/fil...t%20Report.pdf

[s00nr1]

Holy United
https://flyokc.com/sites/default/fil...t%20Report.pdf

I just don't see how that's possible considering the low frequencies and current equipment being flown to/from OKC. Really quite comical when you list it out.

OKC-IAH (in order of departure time):
7x daily -
E175
E175
CR2
CR9
E175
CR9
E175

OKC-DEN:
4x daily -
E175
E175
CR2
CR7

OKC-ORD
2x daily -
E175
E175

By my quick look, it appears OKC is the largest MSA United serves without some sort of mainline service (even Tulsa has UA mainline).

[catch22]

^^^ I’ll check when I get back to work but I looked into February’s UA numbers and they were not correct. I wouldn’t be surprised if March is the same. See below.

I can’t post the exact numbers but United should be around 21,000 in and out (42K total)

It’s interesting that the numbers reported by OKC are exactly doubled of the United Express total, but not inclusive of mainline operations (which did occur according to the report I am looking at).

[catch22]

Mainline returns to DEN on an A319. Sticks for the summer.

[Celebrator]

Ieven Tulsa has UA mainline).

Curiosity got the best of me. First departures of the day are mainline. To DEN on A320 and to IAH on 738. However they also run E135 and 145 on TUL-DEN.

[brianinok]

^^^ I’ll check when I get back to work but I looked into February’s UA numbers and they were not correct. I wouldn’t be surprised if March is the same. See below.

If you calculate out those equipment capacities I believe it is physically impossible for them to have that many passengers in a month. But I also doubt Delta was down that much. Maybe some of Delta's was applied to United?? Who knows....

[s00nr1]

Curiosity got the best of me. First departures of the day are mainline. To DEN on A320 and to IAH on 738. However they also run E135 and 145 on TUL-DEN.

Basically the same as our CR2's haha.