Site Admin

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

This is an interesting quote about AirTran expansion at IND. This comes in a Star News article about the expansion announcement on 1/31/06 when LAX and SFO were added.

"Within nine months of entering the market, the carrier has gone from two nonstop destinations to eight with Tuesday's announcement."

... and ...

"For AirTran, that's quick, Leonard said. Typically, it adds one or two destinations a year to a market, not eight.

"This has been much faster," he said. "It's partly helped by the fact that ATA pulled down so many flights."

Bankrupt ATA Airlines made cuts in Indianapolis for months before ending its flights to and from the city altogether last month. Since May 2005, ATA dropped flights to Las Vegas; New York; Phoenix; St. Petersburg, Fla.; Milwaukee; and Flint, Mich., as well as to Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Leonard said ATA left a lot of demand in Indianapolis.

AirTran is trying to meet it -- first with Los Angeles and San Francisco, and later with nonstop destinations along the East Coast, he said."

Source: http://www.indystar.com/apps/p...060201/BUSINESS/602010379/1003

Notice the text I bolded about the expansion to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and later with nonstop destinations along the East Cost. From the mouth of Leonard, the CEO of AirTran. This clearly states more expansion is to come. East coast wouldn't even take care of what I figured to be the #1 and #2 cities on my short list of expansion destinations which would be LAX and DFW.

Site Admin

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

AirTran is trying to meet it -- first with Los Angeles and San Francisco, and later with nonstop destinations along the East Coast, he said.

Let the speculation begin!

East coast cities. BWI and BOS - book it. I'd bet money on those two. And here's hoping that they add EWR. I fly there a lot, and the only n/s service is CO. My company gets a discounted walkup fare and it's still $800 midweek. If FL enters the market, that fare will drop to $250 easy, and CO will probably double their seats on that route. Yippee for me.

So beyond BWI and BOS, and hopefully EWR, I could see a possible CLT and perhaps MIA. RSW is another maybe. But I don't see any obvious east coast cities after that. I still think DFW would have to be attractive. And if they start up service in PHX, maybe it goes to ATL and IND both.

Site Admin

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

I was thinking BWI & BOS as well. EWR or LGA might be a good bet as well considering the article specifically mentions ATA routes. Notice the article talks about routes recently dropped by ATA like Milwaukee and Flint? If those get added though I'd think they would be further down the line. So I think its obvious that IND is an AirTran focus city. Question is will it become an AirTran hub? With yesterday's schedule increase and the quote from the CEO I would say the chance of it happening were greater now that it was a bit ago.

Here is how I think it will do.

AirTran will continue their build up of service as they have so far by adding obvious routes. They will pick up alot of the big cities like BWI, BOS, EWR, DFW, LAS, etc. They will have a decent network of cities. Maybe 14 to 16. More people start using IND for connecting on flights. This allows FL to add additional frequencies to city pairs or perhaps switching some of the 717 over to the 737's. This will be a slow process as space at IND is limited and FL is short on jets. I think the growth will come as jets get delivered. By the time 2008 rolls around I'd speculate they are up to 20 destinations and maybe 50 daily departures. Moving in to the new terminal they take control of a larger number of gates and with this launch service to smaller markets. This completes the network at IND and turns it in to an FL hub.

IND's location and proximity to other FL markets and a lack of another hub option in this region of the country puts us at the top of the list.

It is speculation but just look at how FL has grown in other markets compared to IND. This jump to 8 destinations puts us behind only ATL, MCO and BWI. We may very well be behind only ATL & MCO by the end of this year.

Member

Joined: 27 Jun 2005
Posts: 333
Location: St. Louis, MO

I think Newark would be a great choice for AirTran, and given LGA's slot status perhaps their only choice, but they need to do the service and make sure they match prices offered currently into La Guardia. That'll be hard to do... NW and US go for $160 or so roundtrip at times into La Guardia. You can get from LGA to downtown by cab, but the appeal of taking the rail service into Grand Central and having it only set you back about $12 instead of the $30 one way cab ride could be appealing to business and a lot of leisure travelers. I know I'd count myself in the mix.

It'd be neat to see more cities announced by April, even if service doesnt begin until December just so AirTran can tout their build up of expansion within their first year of service. It'd definitely grab the public's attention.

Site Admin

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

It is speculation but just look at how FL has grown in other markets compared to IND. This jump to 8 destinations puts us behind only ATL, MCO and BWI. We may very well be behind only ATL & MCO by the end of this year.

And it actually ties us with RSW. Let's look at it this way.

ATL. This is their hub. Period. IND is not going to supplant ATL.

MCO. This is their secondary hub, and one of the busiest o&d airports in the country, even the world. A natural choice for any airline - MCO has flights to everywhere, and everyone wants to fly to MCO. I would seriously doubt IND ever supplants MCO's importance in FL's network.

Now look at BWI. They beefed up service there when US dehubbed the place and following WN's move there. There are currently 12 cities served n/s from BWI. Sounds like, from Indy's info, IND will get to that number in short order. Just as FL moved into BWI on US's departure, so could they move into IND on TZ's departure. The cities served from BWI that IND doesn't have are ROC(hester) - doubtful - DAY - obiously not - BOS, DFW, CLT - probably all three, and SRQ, RSW - likely. Oh, and Grand Bahama - who knows?

The thing I keep coming back to is: does FL really want to have a hub of some sort here and run a lot of connections through it? Or is it more of a focus city like NW's approach, where they want to pick up some point-to-point demand with some connections, but not really designing the route structure to favor hub-and-spoke connections. I guess you could argue that they're limited in their ability to expand at ATL both for space reasons and for air traffic reasons - lots of delays at ATL are simply for landing slots during the DL and FL bank times. But if they want to really establish a second full hub, then why pick IND? After all, IND got passed over by all the big boy airlines when they were establishing midwest hubs. Those went to ORD, CLE, DTW, CVG, and STL. The best place to put a hub is in a city where there's also a lot of o&d. I don't know. I'd like to see an FL hub of some size here, but I'm just not convinced until I start to see it taking shape.

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

stlgph wrote:

I think Newark would be a great choice for AirTran, and given LGA's slot status perhaps their only choice, but they need to do the service and make sure they match prices offered currently into La Guardia. That'll be hard to do... NW and US go for $160 or so roundtrip at times into La Guardia. You can get from LGA to downtown by cab, but the appeal of taking the rail service into Grand Central and having it only set you back about $12 instead of the $30 one way cab ride could be appealing to business and a lot of leisure travelers. I know I'd count myself in the mix.

Actually, the train service is to Penn Station, which is underneath Madison Square Garden. And it IS the best damn deal around. Cab fare to Times Square from LGA is 40-50 bucks. JFK, add 20. EWR, 75+ because of tolls. The train is totally the way to go.

stlgph wrote:

It'd be neat to see more cities announced by April, even if service doesnt begin until December just so AirTran can tout their build up of expansion within their first year of service. It'd definitely grab the public's attention.

Interesting. What do you think the average shmoe thinks when they saw all the NW announcements last year, and now they're starting to hear all these FL announcements (and Peyton is involved in those!). It certainly seems to be showing up in the numbers. I know people who used to drive to MDW for good airfare deals. Nobody does that anymore.[/quote]