A) I think there is still a place in the American Eagle fleet for smaller jets. I'm still hopeful though that we see a new Dash 8 or ATR order to replace the Piedmont Dash 8s.

B) I wouldn't be shocked to see mainline replaced into OKC with Eagle aircraft that have first class cabins. Though I think the more likely step is going to be upgrading the ORD product and then introducing CLT and PHL.

A) I think there is still a place in the American Eagle fleet for smaller jets. I'm still hopeful though that we see a new Dash 8 or ATR order to replace the Piedmont Dash 8s.

B) I wouldn't be shocked to see mainline replaced into OKC with Eagle aircraft that have first class cabins. Though I think the more likely step is going to be upgrading the ORD product and then introducing CLT and PHL.

That would be sad indeed but probably inevitable - can see AA increasing OKC-DFW frequency to 10x/daily on E75s/CR9s - win win for them (no mainline payroll) and for the pax, somewhat. Will definitely miss the S80s though. Thankfully I'm thinking OKC will be one of the last S80 stations for AA.

A) I think there is still a place in the American Eagle fleet for smaller jets. I'm still hopeful though that we see a new Dash 8 or ATR order to replace the Piedmont Dash 8s.

B) I wouldn't be shocked to see mainline replaced into OKC with Eagle aircraft that have first class cabins. Though I think the more likely step is going to be upgrading the ORD product and then introducing CLT and PHL.

You think OKC lands PHL in this deal? CLT and PHL would be excellent additions to the route map.

You think OKC lands PHL in this deal? CLT and PHL would be excellent additions to the route map.

It'll probably be on a CR7, and may come at the expense of one ORD turn, but yes...I wouldn't be shocked at all to see 1 daily to PHL as they begin to play connect the dots.

Southwest has been really interesting the past couple of months. I have been flying the OKC to MCI flight for the past couple of years. After the Airtrain merger they decided to cut the direct flight to MCI and I had to to a plane swap in DAL. Then this week I go to book my airfare and find that my airfare (Business Select) has jumped from under 500 to over 700 roundtrip. Looking forward on the schedule shows this isn't a one week thing but the standard pricing now I took a look at other similar routes that Southwest flies I don't see the fare jump.

I am wondering if OKC can see similar price changes on other routes from Southwest.

Southwest has been really interesting the past couple of months. I have been flying the OKC to MCI flight for the past couple of years. After the Airtrain merger they decided to cut the direct flight to MCI and I had to to a plane swap in DAL. Then this week I go to book my airfare and find that my airfare (Business Select) has jumped from under 500 to over 700 roundtrip. Looking forward on the schedule shows this isn't a one week thing but the standard pricing now I took a look at other similar routes that Southwest flies I don't see the fare jump.

I am wondering if OKC can see similar price changes on other routes from Southwest.

This is what happens when consolidation reaches a critical level and the number of players are cut in half.

Southwest has been really interesting the past couple of months. I have been flying the OKC to MCI flight for the past couple of years. After the Airtrain merger they decided to cut the direct flight to MCI and I had to to a plane swap in DAL. Then this week I go to book my airfare and find that my airfare (Business Select) has jumped from under 500 to over 700 roundtrip. Looking forward on the schedule shows this isn't a one week thing but the standard pricing now I took a look at other similar routes that Southwest flies I don't see the fare jump.

I am wondering if OKC can see similar price changes on other routes from Southwest.


Southwest has web fares available for as low as $211.60 to MCI. Is Business Select worth that much difference to you?

Here are the perks you get:

It is refundable but the lower priced tickets can be applied towards future tickets with no extra fee.

You can fly standby on other flights at no charge and that is a plus but the cost to change flights from the lower fare could easily still save you money.

Priority boarding which can be a plus.

Priority screening lanes where it applies.

A free drink.

Double Rapid Rewards points.

Again, I'm not sure that paying an extra $500.00 is worth all of that put together.

Passengers that fly Business Select obviously find value in them and know what they are getting. The 12x points multiplier is also a pretty big deal when it comes to earning those free trips. You also need to take into consideration on when they are booking the travel and if it is business doing it. If it is last minute, no sense in paying full Y when for $16 more you can get Business Select with the added perks.

The other thing you aren't including is the no show policy for Business Select isn't the same as the lower web only fares. If you don't cancel with in 10 minutes of the flight on those, the funds are gone - they are no longer held. Business Select still will get held and are able to be refunded after the fact.

Of course it depends on the situation the person is traveling under. Regular leisure travel that you or I make won't really be all that attracted to Business Select fares.

Passengers that fly Business Select obviously find value in them and know what they are getting. The 12x points multiplier is also a pretty big deal when it comes to earning those free trips. You also need to take into consideration on when they are booking the travel and if it is business doing it. If it is last minute, no sense in paying full Y when for $16 more you can get Business Select with the added perks.

The other thing you aren't including is the no show policy for Business Select isn't the same as the lower web only fares. If you don't cancel with in 10 minutes of the flight on those, the funds are gone - they are no longer held. Business Select still will get held and are able to be refunded after the fact.

Of course it depends on the situation the person is traveling under. Regular leisure travel that you or I make won't really be all that attracted to Business Select fares.

A potential savings of $300.00 per trip could easily trump extra Rapid Rewards points.

There are obviously some situations where Business Select might make sense but I deal with business travelers all of the time who aren't interested in that and just want the lowest price. You're correct about making a difference whether someone is traveling for a company with a corporate travel policy or traveling on personal business.

I don't see the 10 minutes cancel rule as significant at all. Anyone should be able to do that if they can't make the flight.

You think OKC lands PHL in this deal? CLT and PHL would be excellent additions to the route map.

To be honest, I was more hoping for a flight to MIA for better connections to the Caribbean or South America. Or maybe LGA/JFK for Europe. Might as well hope for DCA while I'm at it!

OKC is a strong FF base for AA. With the merger I am confident we will see some additions, especially at how successful LAX has been for AA. That mean the market will support nonstops from AA under the right condition.

We just need the merger to progress a little further before we start seeing dot connecting.

OKC is a strong FF base for AA. With the merger I am confident we will see some additions, especially at how successful LAX has been for AA. That mean the market will support nonstops from AA under the right condition.

We just need the merger to progress a little further before we start seeing dot connecting.

What dots do you see being connected?

I would agree with venture.

I'm starting to work on analyzing the data for air service from OKC for the year. Currently stats are available through BTS up through June of this year. At some point I hope to have a web interface put together to view this data and allow users to go back to 1997. It's going to take some work to do that, but figured can at least share this year now. I debated how to do this, but I think month by month is the best way right now. I was going to do a the 6 month totals, but that doesn't help us with trends during the year. So this is going to be a bit tedious, but I'll start with January tonight and do another month (ideally) each night.

One thing to understand about this report is that these are pax who traveled on this segment. Through passengers, especially on Southwest, are going to be counted as well. We would need to actually look at the O&D reports to figure an idea of how many of the pax are O&D in the market and not connecting/throughs.

Lastly, I highlighted a couple in red which are showing absolutely unprofitable numbers. One of the markets on this report is Kansas City which we know is gone. To be fair, January is a relatively low travel month so what is seen here isn't going to be represented when I get to March/April or Summer.

Some national numbers to compare by. Overall a load factor of 75% of the nation's scheduled passenger seats were filled. Airline specific load factors were - American 76%, Delta 77%, Frontier 87%, Southwest 69%, and Untied 80%.

January

Outbound - Overall 2042 flights, 132,975 pax, 203,433 seats, 65% load factor

DestinationFlightsPax BoardedSeats AvailAirline(s) - Grouped by BrandLoad FactorAtlanta140913713066Delta, Pinnacle, Express Jet70%Baltimore3129194265Southwest68%Dallas Love1401155419543Southwest59%Denver88931612202Sout hwest76%Denver9175759401Frontier, Republic81%Denver8153947398United, et al73%Dallas/Ft Worth2172106330461American69%Detroit5221593721Pinn acle, ExpressJet dba Delta58%Newark258641250ExpressJet dba United69%Houston Hobby1081096214754Southwest74%Washington Dulles3113472046GoJet, Mesa dba United66%Houston Bush2631103916633United, et al66%Las Vegas6264928548Southwest76%Los Angeles5626373580American Eagle Airlines74%Los Angeles2710821782SkyWest dba United61%Kansas City5827378032Southwest34%Chicago Midway5325007435Southwest34%Memphis5114962550Pinna cle, SkyWest dba Delta59%Minneapolis5919372965Pinnacle, et al dba Delta65%Chicago O'Hare11241156784SkyWest, et al dba United61%Chicago O'Hare9028015049American Eagle Airlines55%Phoenix5961008218Southwest74%San Francisco2612371716SkyWest dba United72%Salt Lake City6227744041SkyWest dba Delta69%St. Louis5332987423Southwest44%
Inbound - Overall 2042 Flight, 141,687 pax, 203,551 seats, 70% overall load factor


DestinationFlightsPax BoardedSeats AvailAirline(s) - Grouped by BrandLoad FactorAtlanta141991413171Delta, Pinnacle, Express Jet75%Baltimore3123714391Southwest54%Dallas Love1381184918948Southwest63%Denver89952712489Sout hwest76%Denver9178299401Frontier, Republic83%Denver7860147350United, et al82%Dallas/Ft Worth2122240729680American75%Detroit5225863754Pinn acle, ExpressJet dba Delta69%Newark237891150ExpressJet dba United69%Houston Hobby111977115126Southwest65%Washington Dulles3114412046GoJet, Mesa dba United70%Houston Bush2651223616791United, et al73%Las Vegas6272308563Southwest84%Los Angeles5625203578American Eagle Airlines70%Los Angeles2713781782SkyWest dba United77%Kansas City5531117589Southwest41%Chicago Midway5340767563Southwest54%Memphis5014132500Pinna cle, SkyWest dba Delta57%Minneapolis5923632976Pinnacle, et al dba Delta79%Chicago O'Hare11551117046SkyWest, et al dba United73%Chicago O'Hare9032485036American Eagle Airlines64%Phoenix5958208281Southwest70%San Francisco2813581848SkyWest dba United73%Salt Lake City6329444106SkyWest dba Delta72%St. Louis5538467526Southwest51%

That is interesting data indeed. Thanks for sharing! Good to see that places like LAX, SFO, EWR, IAD all have healthy loads. Even more reason for the new AA to add PHL/JFK/CLT (probably PHL is the most likely I would think?). One suggestion - can you alphabetize the city column? Might be easier to find specific destinations that way.

That is interesting data indeed. Thanks for sharing! Good to see that places like LAX, SFO, EWR, IAD all have healthy loads. Even more reason for the new AA to add PHL/JFK/CLT (probably PHL is the most likely I would think?). One suggestion - can you alphabetize the city column? Might be easier to find specific destinations that way.

I was going to go back and redo the ordering, but I was getting tired. LOL The list was alphabetized by the airport code so I just going down the list as fast as I could. LOL

At some point I hope to have a web interface put together to view this data and allow users to go back to 1997. It's going to take some work to do that, but figured can at least share this year now. I debated how to do this, but I think month by month is the best way right now.

Why put that kind of effort out. Just throw it in a google spreadsheet and share it.

Why put that kind of effort out. Just throw it in a google spreadsheet and share it.

I could do that yes...but the data isn't that clean. It is already "contaminated" with charters, extra segments, cancelled segments, and cargo flights. So there is some level of data scrubbing that needs to take place. Also, not all the data is available in just one set. I'm going to try to get the financials worked in as well so we can see the revenue for each city pair as well as an estimate to the cost of it. It'll be much easier to manage/display outside of Excel or the like. :)

Is there anyway to see what the KC and Chicago southwest routes were performing at before they were competing with each other?

Is there anyway to see what the KC and Chicago southwest routes were performing at before they were competing with each other?

Yeah. I'm working on getting the fare data included as well so we can see yields and average fares. I'll also be able to put up a very high level profit/loss figure with each one.

I'm still tweaking the numbers to find a happy medium (since system CASM doesn't really translate well to single route CASM). Here is an early look of where Kansas City via Southwest was operating at for January...

DIRECTCITYCARRIERMOYRFLTS_PLFLTS_ACSEATSPAXLFMKT_S HRAVG_FAREDISTCASMFUEL_ESTCOSTREV_ESTEST_PLOriginK ansas CitySouthwest1201358588032273734%97.30% $ 146.65313 $ 0.0826 $ 0.0500 $ 466,701.93 $ 401,381.05 $ (65,320.88)

Expect some changes to the American schedule starting in August. Parker's team released today that they are scrapping the "rolling hub" strategy that American has used and going back to banked hubs. The Ex-US hubs (PHL/CLT/PHX) are already banked so this will mainly impact DFW, ORD, and MIA.

Expect some changes to the American schedule starting in August. Parker's team released today that they are scrapping the "rolling hub" strategy that American has used and going back to banked hubs. The Ex-US hubs (PHL/CLT/PHX) are already banked so this will mainly impact DFW, ORD, and MIA.

It may not be related to the merger but AA has had an avalanche of schedule changes during the last 10 days. Some of the changes have been significant.

Expect some changes to the American schedule starting in August. Parker's team released today that they are scrapping the "rolling hub" strategy that American has used and going back to banked hubs. The Ex-US hubs (PHL/CLT/PHX) are already banked so this will mainly impact DFW, ORD, and MIA.

For us laymen, can you explain the difference between a "rolling hub" and a "banked hub" and how it might affect OKC?

It may not be related to the merger but AA has had an avalanche of schedule changes during the last 10 days. Some of the changes have been significant.

Do you mind sharing?

For us laymen, can you explain the difference between a "rolling hub" and a "banked hub" and how it might affect OKC?

Banked hubs are structured this way: xxx-DFW (1-2 hour gap during which terminals are packed, airport is busy), then DFW-xxx. So inbound flights are coordinated to arrive around the same time, then the outbounds. This allows airlines to maximize connectivity through a hub. Rolling hubs don't have as coordinated an inbound-outbound schedule, so connecting times can be staggered throughout the day. From what I understand this works better at congested hubs like ORD where gate space is at a premium. But then again I think DFW is also considered a rolling hub - but that may be because AA has the gates and slots to maximize frequencies to wherever they want.

Banked hubs are structured this way: xxx-DFW (1-2 hour gap during which terminals are packed, airport is busy), then DFW-xxx. So inbound flights are coordinated to arrive around the same time, then the outbounds. This allows airlines to maximize connectivity through a hub. Rolling hubs don't have as coordinated an inbound-outbound schedule, so connecting times can be staggered throughout the day. From what I understand this works better at congested hubs like ORD where gate space is at a premium. But then again I think DFW is also considered a rolling hub - but that may be because AA has the gates and slots to maximize frequencies to wherever they want.

Nailed it. Yes...DFW is also a rolling hub still, even though frequencies are pretty high to quite a few destinations. It'll be interesting to see what happens at ORD, even though they still have delays as soon as a cloud appears.

Do you mind sharing?

That isn't possible. That was my observation based on the many changes they sent to me for a multitude of customers. I don't have a list of all of the changes, but trust me, it was a lot. The biggest problem is that they use computers to advise of schedule changes to existing reservations and, many times, it can results in missed connections or extremely long layovers when other more logical schedules are available. It is a real headache because each one must be corrected with a call to the airline.