Oklahoma Commercial Air Service Discussion 2012

[venture]

It is a joke how much International is abused in airport branding

Only requirement is that they have customs available on the airport grounds. That can be either for cargo or passenger.

[Bellaboo]

For all you airline folks -

When are the best fares posted online ? I saw flights from OKC - FFL the other day for 265.00 RT, the very next day they were 388.00. This was on AA for the middle of January.

[catch22]

Tuesdays and Wednesdays are typically the cheapest travel dates.

There's not really a big formula for when they will have a fare sale. Just have to keep an eye out. As seats sell on a flight the price goes up. So, it can vary day to day.

[tucy]

United will be taking Gate 8 soon. And keeping 3, 5, 9, 10 as well.

Why would they do that? 4 gates should be way more than enough for their service and any reasonably likely increase.

[catch22]

Why would they do that? 4 gates should be way more than enough for their service and any reasonably likely increase.

We run 4 gates right now and usually rent a gate (usually Gate 1 or 12) from the city literally every morning and night for those two banks. Also all 4 gates are occupied in the 10am and 2pm banks usually. 5th gate allows more flexibility and more capacity for the morning and evening banks.

[catch22]

Looks like ARINC has started construction of their south ramp extension.

They've mentioned they are looking at building a 3rd hangar sometime in the next few years if demand stays up.

[catch22]

Looks like the TSA has begun to use the West-Auxiliary checkpoint located behind the old Continental counter, which leads to the are between Harold's shoe shine and the EA Sports store. This is for overflow.

Also expect United to start using Gate 8 sometime next month.

[catch22]

Also the fence has gone up for the OKC Police Substation/Heliport on the NE side of the airport (SW corner of SW 54 and S Portland).

[HangryHippo]

When are they supposed to consolidate the security checkpoints?

[Snowman]

When are they supposed to consolidate the security checkpoints?

Consolidate? The only changes I had heard of was adding the annex for additional capacity for higher traffic times like holidays, I did not think anything was happening to the normal ones.

[catch22]

In the Central Concourse reconfiguration plans they plan on turning the two East and West checkpoints into arrival greeting areas (also a bad move because everything arrival related needs to be downstairs, no more mixing and matching). And they will make a central checkpoint between the United and Southwest counters.

Should have just done it right the first time instead of this poor design and planning. Even this correction will present planning problems.

Need to just start from scratch again since they didn't get it right the first time, and they won't get it right this second time either.

[venture]

DOT started the bid process for the remaining pair of AIR-21 slots surrendered by Spirit Airlines at DCA. These are the type of slots WN applied for previous that were temporarily being held by US Airways to maintain DCA-JAN (Jackson, MS) service when DL left the market. US won that bit to retain the slots to continue service to JAN. In the previous round only F9 bidding for DCA-SDF (Louisville) was in competition for the slots.

No word yet if WN will re-bid and even if they do, if they'll re-bid the DCA-OKC route.

Regulations.gov

[HangryHippo]

Yep. I made a post in another thread about exactly this. Our airport continues to make planning problems as a result of poor design and little common sense. I just don't get it.

[HangryHippo]

I saw today that JetBlue announced service to/from JFK to Albuquerque, NM. I wish this meant JetBlue was getting closer to serving OKC...

[adaniel]

^
Santa Fe (and a lesser extent Taos and ABQ) have become very popular with the NYC art set. I think it may have more to do with that.

But I agree it would be awesome if JetBlue came to OKC.

[HangryHippo]

^
Santa Fe (and a lesser extent Taos and ABQ) have become very popular with the NYC art set. I think it may have more to do with that.

But I agree it would be awesome if JetBlue came to OKC.

That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that, but it makes perfect sense. I really do think OKC could support a direct flight to JFK. I don't mind LaGuardia, but the AirTrain connection from JFK makes it my first choice.

[venture]

That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that, but it makes perfect sense. I really do think OKC could support a direct flight to JFK. I don't mind LaGuardia, but the AirTrain connection from JFK makes it my first choice.

Everything I've read has OKC Waaaaaaaaaaaay down the list for JetBlue. Apparently we just don't have the customer base they are after.

[HangryHippo]

Everything I've read has OKC Waaaaaaaaaaaay down the list for JetBlue. Apparently we just don't have the customer base they are after.

Other than OKC not being the "hip" destination that JetBlue looks for, are there other factors at play against us that explain why we're so far down their list? Is it our passenger numbers?

[venture]

Other than OKC not being the "hip" destination that JetBlue looks for, are there other factors at play against us that explain why we're so far down their list? Is it our passenger numbers?

It is definitely pretty complex. Q2 O&D stats show around 322 pax per day going between NYC and OKC. United's market share is around 35.8% of that or 115.3 pax a day. They current run the route with single 50-seat ERJ per day that tends to average 79% load factors through the year (lower in winter, higher rest of the year). So that makes the math easy here showing about 79 passengers a day going to or from NYC and OKC. That there leaves about 207 pax a day for someone else and most of those are all spread out on the other carriers.

JetBlue is going to look at those numbers and ask, "can we drop in 400 seats a day and fill them profitably?" The answer to that right now is no. If they got all of the remaining pax they would be barely over 50% load factors. Their current average CASM (Cost per Available Seat Mile) would estimate the total cost for ONE WAY from JFK to OKC at around $16,143. That means they would need to change an average fare of $323 to break even at 50% LF, which is $22 higher than United's average fare and $25 higher than the average fare over all between OKC and NYC.

Now they could always come in and stimulate the market and get the pax numbers up. They could also achieve their target yield (around 13 cents a seat mile) with additional ancillary revenues. I don't doubt that JetBlue could be successful in OKC, but right now the market isn't good for them unless they want to spend time building. With them going into Albuquerque now, starting next April, I took a look at that market. They board 100 more passengers a day between ABQ and NYC, but the average fare is about $35 lower here. So what I get from that is we could be closer than what people have been saying, when it comes to revenue performance, but the issue comes with being able to find enough butts to put in seats.

[catch22]

It is definitely pretty complex. Q2 O&D stats show around 322 pax per day going between NYC and OKC. United's market share is around 35.8% of that or 115.3 pax a day. They current run the route with single 50-seat ERJ per day that tends to average 79% load factors through the year (lower in winter, higher rest of the year). So that makes the math easy here showing about 79 passengers a day going to or from NYC and OKC. That there leaves about 207 pax a day for someone else and most of those are all spread out on the other carriers.

JetBlue is going to look at those numbers and ask, "can we drop in 400 seats a day and fill them profitably?" The answer to that right now is no. If they got all of the remaining pax they would be barely over 50% load factors. Their current average CASM (Cost per Available Seat Mile) would estimate the total cost for ONE WAY from JFK to OKC at around $16,143. That means they would need to change an average fare of $323 to break even at 50% LF, which is $22 higher than United's average fare and $25 higher than the average fare over all between OKC and NYC.

Now they could always come in and stimulate the market and get the pax numbers up. They could also achieve their target yield (around 13 cents a seat mile) with additional ancillary revenues. I don't doubt that JetBlue could be successful in OKC, but right now the market isn't good for them unless they want to spend time building. With them going into Albuquerque now, starting next April, I took a look at that market. They board 100 more passengers a day between ABQ and NYC, but the average fare is about $35 lower here. So what I get from that is we could be closer than what people have been saying, when it comes to revenue performance, but the issue comes with being able to find enough butts to put in seats.

United historically is about 60% connecting over EWR. So about 20 of the passengers on that flight are local NYC passengers.

[OUman]

^Why 400 seats/day? An Embraer 190 would do the job fairly well on a single roundtrip, it doesn't have to use the 320s. Of course the timings would have to be right.

[venture]

^Why 400 seats/day? An Embraer 190 would do the job fairly well on a single roundtrip, it doesn't have to use the 320s. Of course the timings would have to be right.

We'll have to see how ABQ works out. A single rotation into a new station seems like a total waste to me. Regardless, even 200 seats a day would be overkill right now going by Catch's numbers. 40 pax per day on the nonstop flight (counting inbound and outbound) is terrible.

[catch22]

We'll have to see how ABQ works out. A single rotation into a new station seems like a total waste to me. Regardless, even 200 seats a day would be overkill right now going by Catch's numbers. 40 pax per day on the nonstop flight (counting inbound and outbound) is terrible.

ot. really considerng they are mosly high paying last minyte are passengers. $$

[venture]

ot. really considerng they are mosly high paying last minyte are passengers. $$

If I have time I can go through the DOT data and get the actual income for UA on the route to compare, but I'm sure it is satisfactory for them. For B6, I don't think it would be enough to make it work.

[venture]

Tulsa will main a new nonstop city announcement on Monday. Southwest released its extension of the schedule going into June of next year on Monday. Could very well see them getting either BWI or MDW.