Site Admin

Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 949
Location: Carmel, IN

Excellent graphic from USA Today accompanying a story they did on the airline capacity cutbacks.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel...cks_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip


Airline Cutbacks Graphic

Mouse over Indiana and then over the adjacent states, and look at the list on the right when you mouseover. Interesting to note that we're seeing a 2.3% increase in capacity, while (not surprisingly) the other three airports are seeing cutbacks. This is based on published fall schedules. I wonder where the capacity increase is coming from?

Also, it's of note that Colorado is increasing, but that's largely a seasonal factor as fall schedules are put back on ahead of winter tourism season. Maine, Vermont, ND, SD, and Wyoming are meaningless, since there is relatively little capacity in those states anyway, and a small change in seats means a big change in %. For Wyoming and Vermont, it's probably a shift of a few flights to larger aircraft for ski season anyway.

Interesting that Washington state is a net increase. Some of the cities might be seasonal schedule adjustments, but a 1.2% increase at SEA is significant. Perhaps airlines building up some capacity as Asian tourists come back to the U.S. in greater numbers?

And of course Louisiana is a net increase. This is probably just the continued return of airline capacity to New Orleans, plus the strength of the oil-based economy there.

One more note - check out CVG, SDF, and MDW and their declines. Make's Indy's situation look really great in comparison with these regionally competitive airports.

Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

NW added 1x to SAT and AUS but those additions are offset by the dropping of MCI. They also have dropped PHL which was 2x on the CRJ I believe and TPA won't run in the fall. That is a DC9. WN added 2x to DEN so one offsets the TPA DC9 and the other offsets the PHL flights. I believe I saw that US is increasing service to PIT and DL is going all mainline to ATL. Not sure what else there is. Oh FL has the 1x daily to LAS that didn't exist last fall.