Question on AAI Ops at Smaller airports

[chase]

AAI flies to 30 more cities than SWA. The frequency on some of these flights are less than what is normally considered at SWA for minimum operations.

Which cities have the fewest flights?

Is there a cutoff of flights (minimum number) that warrant local subsidized funding of AAI operations to justify these lower flight totals?

Is there more than one city served from these smaller cities?

Are CSA, rampers and other ground personnel contract employees or full time?

Do you find the turns at these smaller cities the same, slower or faster?

What city pairings use the Skywest code sharing exclusively and are there mainline flying any of those city-pairings at the same time?

What cities does AAI merely borrow gate space vs. own the rights to the gates outright? For example I believe in SFO AAI uses whatever gates CAL tells them to when the flight arrives.

Any other thoughts/observations about if there are smaller city pairings that might be dropped based upon the view from the front.

Thanks in advance for answering and looking forward to flying with all of you.

 

[maxblast72]

AAI flies to 30 more cities than SWA. The frequency on some of these flights are less than what is normally considered at SWA for minimum operations.

Which cities have the fewest flights?

I think our Allegiant business model copying cities like CRW, LEX, AVL, and TYS only have 3 or 4 flights a week to MCO. I would say that is a little less than typical Southwest service.

 

[maxblast72]

What city pairings use the Skywest code sharing exclusively and are there mainline flying any of those city-pairings at the same time?

Skywest feeds our MKE hub from the following 6 cities: OMA, DSM, IND, CAK, STL, and PIT. I believe there is CRJ service exclusively for those 6 cities out of MKE.

 

[funnyman12]

ABE (allentown) has 1 daily flight to MCO and 4x/week to FLL and seasonal daily to ATL. MDT(harrisburg) has the same schedule and share a station manager.

 

[Cruncher]

For cities that only have a few flights per week, are the employees Airtran part-timers, or contract?

The Skywest feed will end when this is done (as per our CBA).

 

[8v8tr]

For cities that only have a few flights per week, are the employees Airtran part-timers, or contract?

The Skywest feed will end when this is done (as per our CBA).

Most of the stations I have been to with limited service has contract employees.


The feed cant end soon enough!!

 

[717capt]

Chase,
I think the guys have pretty much hit it spot on. Also some of our seasonal routes/cities change quite often and tend to spool up according to the time of year. Spring break to FL, long holiday weekend, etc.

They did just announce that Gulport, MS (GPT) service would end in March. That's the second time by the way. We ended it once a few years back and I guess the casinos provided inticements to operate it again for about a year but again it's going away in March. As far as some of the other cities being dropped, havn't heard anything.
Just from of my own personal obervations of the combined route map after the merger, there may a few cities, that in my opinion, may be dropped by SW management.
RIC/PHF/ORF come to mind immediately. We fly to RIC and PHF and of course SW flys to ORF. There may not be enough of a population base around those three cities to support all three. My money would be on PHF getting dropped just cause it's in the middle. Also MDT may be gone due to it's close proximaty to BWI, but then again We also have a good presence in BWI and we operated seasonaly out of MDT. Well I should say we operate year round out of MDT just seasonal routes.
Hope that helps. If you have any further questions about anything else, please feel free to ask.

 

[717capt]

Oh and btw we did just announce seasonal service to Bermuda next year so there is at least 1 new addition.

 

[Saluki Dawg]

I see anything that's seasonal right now going to year round when this deal closes. WN doesn't do seasonal service for the most part and i don't see that changing in the future. Also look for a lot of new routes out of these smaller cities to change to better align with our combined route network. Cities like MLI, BMI, and DSM will have their flights shifted to daily frequencies to MDW and STL instead of three times weekly flights to RSW and MCO. Those are just three examples that come to mind, and you guys have dozens of other stations that will see the same kinds of shifts in frequency and service throughout your routemap. So I see a lot of potential growth to come from these smaller AAI stations post merger.

 

[texman]

Oh and btw we did just announce seasonal service to Bermuda next year so there is at least 1 new addition.

GK stated the other day that your aircraft are so under utilized. Get ready to be productive. This is a good thing. I ran into yall in DEN the other day. They had a 4 hour sit! That will soon be a thing of the pass.