Tuesday, April 01, 2014

Little hope for small airports to lure service - Mergers cut out most smaller cities from new routes

By JOE SHARKEY New York Times News Service
Publication: The Day
Published 04/01/2014 12:00 AM
Updated 03/31/2014 09:45 PM


Air travel has a lot of new realities: On a cheap coach fare, if you want a seat that isn't in the middle of a cramped row back by the toilets, you are probably going to have to pay extra. Your frequent flier mileage programs are losing value, especially at the lower elite levels. If you're flying internationally, you're probably flying an airline alliance and not a particular airline.

And most basically, if you live in a small or midsize city, your air service choices have been diminishing - and that is not going to change. If your local news outlets assure you that the city airport and municipal officials are spending money on studies to attract new air service, they are probably chasing ghosts.

"I don't know of any time in this racket when there have been more charlatans out there trying to sell snake oil to airports," said Michael Boyd, president of Boyd Group International, an airline forecasting and consulting company. "It's like these airports are saying, 'We want to hope there's hope.' They can hire consultants, do studies, dangle money in front of airlines, try human sacrifice-whatever. It's all well-meaning, but you have got to tell them the truth upfront."

The truth is that with bankruptcies, mergers and consolidations, we are now down in the United States to four network airlines - American, Delta, United and Southwest - and five carriers with more limited route systems: Alaska, JetBlue, Spirit, Frontier and Virgin America.

Here and there, some communities can claim success in attracting a new route or two, usually by paying an airline to operate it for a specified period. JetBlue and Southwest are often sought out by local airports hoping to lure a carrier with incentives in the hope that the route will start proving itself financially.

Tucson International Airport in Tucson, Ariz., is also hoping to provide incentives that will persuade an airline to fill holes in nonstop long-haul routes left when airlines-invoking what they all call "capacity discipline" - started reducing flights and routes about four years ago.

"The nation's small and medium-sized airports have been disproportionately affected by these reductions in service, and recent airline behavior appears to signal a trend toward consolidation of service at the largest airports, with fewer direct flights available from smaller airports," according to a report on market forces shaping community air service by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology International Center for Air Transportation. Between 2007 and 2012, the 29 largest airports in the United States lost 8.8 percent of flights, while the rest, the smaller airports, lost 21.3 percent, according to the report.

Declining competition accounts for some of that disparity. Airlines also have been retiring their fleets of 50-seat regional jets, the backbone of service at midsize airports, in favor of larger, more fuel-efficient aircraft that enhance the industry's most profitable form of flying: international long-haul service. That, of course, is concentrated at big city hubs.

"Almost 30 percent of all people getting on and off airplanes today at airports across the country, on average, are directly or indirectly the result of international access," Boyd said. The indirect part, he explains, "means the man who flies over from Shanghai and gets off the airplane in Detroit - often he's connecting to another domestic flight. Then, bingo, he's a domestic passenger."

While passengers still routinely connect from smaller airports to big hubs to connect again to long-haul domestic nonstops or international flights, declining local service often means that a traveler will drive for an hour or two to a larger airport for more choices and greater convenience.

That's a trend local airports try to challenge, but Boyd says he thinks it will prevail.


Source:   http://www.theday.com