KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Transportation topics in KC
flyingember
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by flyingember »

I counted the number of destinations served by each airline that are 400 miles (straight line) from downtown KC with no direct flight by any airline. That's a lot of destinations to require everyone to connect to. There's some overlap but American doesn't serve every city that the other airlines do. The list is somewhere around 50x nearby destinations that transfer through a different city than KC

American: 37x
United 25x
Delta: 20x
Allegiant: 20x
Frontier: 12x
Volaris: 9x
SW: 7x
Alaska: 3x
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by smh »

flyingember wrote: Wed Aug 29, 2018 10:32 am I counted the number of destinations served by each airline that are 400 miles (straight line) from downtown KC with no direct flight by any airline. That's a lot of destinations to require everyone to connect to. There's some overlap but American doesn't serve every city that the other airlines do. The list is somewhere around 50x nearby destinations that transfer through a different city than KC

American: 37x
United 25x
Delta: 20x
Allegiant: 20x
Frontier: 12x
Volaris: 9x
SW: 7x
Alaska: 3x
What?
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by flyingember »

smh wrote: Wed Aug 29, 2018 11:07 am
flyingember wrote: Wed Aug 29, 2018 10:32 am I counted the number of destinations served by each airline that are 400 miles (straight line) from downtown KC with no direct flight by any airline. That's a lot of destinations to require everyone to connect to. There's some overlap but American doesn't serve every city that the other airlines do. The list is somewhere around 50x nearby destinations that transfer through a different city than KC

American: 37x
United 25x
Delta: 20x
Allegiant: 20x
Frontier: 12x
Volaris: 9x
SW: 7x
Alaska: 3x
What?
Clarification
I counted the number of destinations served by each airline that are 400 miles (straight line) from downtown KC with no direct flight (to/from KC) by that airline.

Basically that's how many places could have a flight to KC but if someone wanted to fly to it they need to fly to another city first. Not all make sense, but Little Rock is 6 hours by car and 100% of flights require a transfer to get there.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by brewcrew1000 »

Why does it matter how many locations are within 400 miles of us? There are probably 5 people per day going from KC to Little Rock by plane while there are probably 60-70 a day going to little rock from Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas nonstop (Not including connections).

We basically have 4 huge airports (MSP, ORD, DFW, DEN) right now within 500 miles of us, why would any airline want to put a huge hub here?
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by beautyfromashes »

brewcrew1000 wrote: Wed Aug 29, 2018 10:10 am You would think an Airline would try to start some 5th Freedom routes from Europe to US then US to South America. It would seem perfect for TAP to at least try a couple routes in and out of Brazil
I’m not sure but flights from Europe to SA might be direct, at least to the eastern side of the continent where most major cities are. I’m sure there are probably direct flights from Portugal to Brazil since they have a historical connection and share a language.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by flyingember »

brewcrew1000 wrote: Wed Aug 29, 2018 11:28 am Why does it matter how many locations are within 400 miles of us? There are probably 5 people per day going from KC to Little Rock by plane while there are probably 60-70 a day going to little rock from Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas nonstop (Not including connections).

We basically have 4 huge airports (MSP, ORD, DFW, DEN) right now within 500 miles of us, why would any airline want to put a huge hub here?
Why couldn't we be a hub? Salt Lake City is for Delta and the metro is smaller than KC. They don't use Dallas, Minneapolis or Denver as a hub. Instead they use Cincinnati and Detroit. Why would any airline want a hub in those cities with Chicago so close? Why does Spirit have a hub in Dallas and Houston? Detroit and Chicago?

I'm sure there's people from Omaha trying to get to Little Rock and could use a KC hub. That's a 9 hour drive and flights are going out of their way to get to any nearby hub. Look at Omaha to Minneapolis to Little Rock. That's a really stupid route to fly with KC halfway in between. Then look if you go through Denver instead.

The idea is to overlay some regional flights into KC and start to shorten distances. It's hard to sell two stop flights but if there's 100x people in Omaha, Sioux Falls, Des Moines, Cheyenne and Fargo all wanting to get to Atlanta each day it could make sense to consolidate five flights in KC rather than Chicago or Minneapolis.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by brewcrew1000 »

If more airlines run a point to point system like southwest then we will most likely get KC to Little Rock routes but most of the huge airlines don't run that kind of system and I doubt they ever will. If it wasn't for Southwest and its point to point system the number of unique nonstops out of KC would be downright awful.

FYI - SW does run a STL to Little Rock nonstop but not a Midway to Little Rock flight
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by bobbyhawks »

I used to travel to Little Rock for work when there was still a direct flight. It was a Beechcraft 1900 (twin prop) that you had to board via stairs on the apron. It had no bathroom, about 20 seats, and was extremely loud (US Airways). Monday mornings were normally pretty full, but Thursday evenings were normally only about half full. I think a number of people probably rode that thing one or two times and decided driving or using a connection on real planes was a better option. Believe me you, you've never really flown until you've had a number of drinks, stepped onto a Beechcraft 1900 where the pilot is plotting a course on a real map, endured a 1.5 hour+ flight with no bathroom, and watched over their shoulders as you land that tiny thing blowing about in a storm (they would randomly leave the cockpit door open or it would fly open mid-flight, even though they are not supposed to).
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by dev49 »

flyingember wrote: Wed Aug 29, 2018 1:08 pm
brewcrew1000 wrote: Wed Aug 29, 2018 11:28 am Why does it matter how many locations are within 400 miles of us? There are probably 5 people per day going from KC to Little Rock by plane while there are probably 60-70 a day going to little rock from Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas nonstop (Not including connections).

We basically have 4 huge airports (MSP, ORD, DFW, DEN) right now within 500 miles of us, why would any airline want to put a huge hub here?
Why couldn't we be a hub? Salt Lake City is for Delta and the metro is smaller than KC. They don't use Dallas, Minneapolis or Denver as a hub. Instead they use Cincinnati and Detroit. Why would any airline want a hub in those cities with Chicago so close? Why does Spirit have a hub in Dallas and Houston? Detroit and Chicago?

I'm sure there's people from Omaha trying to get to Little Rock and could use a KC hub. That's a 9 hour drive and flights are going out of their way to get to any nearby hub. Look at Omaha to Minneapolis to Little Rock. That's a really stupid route to fly with KC halfway in between. Then look if you go through Denver instead. You have to have some kind of O&D demand to make the flight worth it.

The idea is to overlay some regional flights into KC and start to shorten distances. It's hard to sell two stop flights but if there's 100x people in Omaha, Sioux Falls, Des Moines, Cheyenne and Fargo all wanting to get to Atlanta each day it could make sense to consolidate five flights in KC rather than Chicago or Minneapolis.
SLC is in a location where Delta wanted to use as a hub to fan from out west (like United has Denver). It is more about location than it is the size of it. I am guessing the amount of people going from Omaha to Little Rock (and all the other smaller cities around KC) is so small that going in a straight line isn't going to matter much when it is a short hop to Minny/Denver/Chicago. They would need to be running prop planes to match demand for those flights.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by flyingember »

brewcrew1000 wrote: Wed Aug 29, 2018 1:47 pm If more airlines run a point to point system like southwest then we will most likely get KC to Little Rock routes but most of the huge airlines don't run that kind of system and I doubt they ever will. If it wasn't for Southwest and its point to point system the number of unique nonstops out of KC would be downright awful.

FYI - SW does run a STL to Little Rock nonstop but not a Midway to Little Rock flight
I expect to see more airlines to look more like Allegiant and SW where flights are shorter to smaller hubs and routes will be tighter geographically. Allegiant has 24 focus cities. It kind of looks like they're trying to figure out which cities to use for this tier so eventually you can reach any city in their network easily. KC could be the center of 5 smaller cities and as a focus we connect to 20 cities. These 5 smaller cities could connect to three other focus cities and that gives them one hop to 60 destinations.

Instead of 10 big hubs in ten big cities you have 20-30 smaller ones spaced out more evenly and while all airlines are going to serve every big hub, KC could be the hub for two airlines and we can reach a bunch of these airline's cities nonstop but need to go through Chicago or Denver for other airlines.

It doesn't take much for Delta or United or American to move capacity around by taking the 10 most popular connections and make them nonstops and so on, in order to add space at Chicago. Then as this scales up they redirect all flights where KC would be closer and more direct to connect here instead of Minneapolis or Chicago.

I can picture a once a week direct flight from Paris in a very large plane terminating in KC that has connections into regional cities instead of another city in order to relieve capacity at ORD.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by normalthings »

Back when Alaskan was doing well, I had always imagined that they would be in the best position to hub in KC. Their current hubs are all on the west coast so they were in need a hub in the Midwest. Plus their partnerships with volaris and Condor meant those 2 airlines would likely add routes to KC as well.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by brewcrew1000 »

normalthings wrote: Wed Aug 29, 2018 5:53 pm Back when Alaskan was doing well, I had always imagined that they would be in the best position to hub in KC. Their current hubs are all on the west coast so they were in need a hub in the Midwest. Plus their partnerships with volaris and Condor meant those 2 airlines would likely add routes to KC as well.
I really thought this was possible as well. When SW starts flying to Hawaii I really think Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines should merge. It would free up so many planes for AS and when SW starts flying to Hawaii the yields will be trash for all airlines flying to Hawaii so AS needs to think Midwest hub or merge with another big airline
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

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normalthings wrote: Wed Aug 29, 2018 5:53 pm Back when Alaskan was doing well, I had always imagined that they would be in the best position to hub in KC. Their current hubs are all on the west coast so they were in need a hub in the Midwest. Plus their partnerships with volaris and Condor meant those 2 airlines would likely add routes to KC as well.
That was still a dream of mine... Are they not doing well?
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by normalthings »

brewcrew1000 wrote: Wed Aug 29, 2018 6:06 pm
normalthings wrote: Wed Aug 29, 2018 5:53 pm Back when Alaskan was doing well, I had always imagined that they would be in the best position to hub in KC. Their current hubs are all on the west coast so they were in need a hub in the Midwest. Plus their partnerships with volaris and Condor meant those 2 airlines would likely add routes to KC as well.
when SW starts flying to Hawaii the yields will be trash for all airlines flying to Hawaii so AS needs to think Midwest hub or merge with another big airline
That was still a dream of mine... Are they not doing well?
Alaskan Airlines is for all intents and purposes is a west coast focused airline.

1.The merger with Virgin lead to their gaining a lot of SOCAL hubs and routes. SWA has increased pressure signifcantly in California , it’s basically a war between the 2. Now feel free to provide your thoughts but Alaskan has really pretty much retreated at every turn. I don’t get why they’d make the Virgin investment then not fight to maintain their market share there.

2. Seattle is the home hub for Alaskan(like Atlanta for DAL, Love for SWA, etc). This used to work well when they had a partnership with delta since delta wasn’t big in that part of the US and Alaskan was. However, Delta dropped Alaskan and turned Seattle into one of their quickly growing hubs. So even on their home turf Alaskan is being attacked. See the new Delta route from Seattle to KC? It’s a byproduct of the “war on Alaskan”.

Alaskan has always been a smaller airline. They can’t keep retreating because they have nothing to retreat to. They either have to merge, expand, both, or they will die.

My problem with a Hawaiian merger is that Hawaiian has a lot of West Coast routes and so too does Alaskan. A merged airline would be a highly regional airline. Which don’t do really well. IMHO, it would make more sense for JetBlue and Alaskan or JetBlue and Hawaiian to merge.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by town cow »

Competition is cutting Icelandair's profits:

https://skift.com/2018/08/28/icelandair ... i=65556998
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by normalthings »

You can fly KC to Europe for pretty cheap now on BA(non direct). Interesting to see what will happen. I had heard Icelandairs station agent here was saying they planned on going year round.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by brewcrew1000 »

IcelandAir should focus on more mid tier cities like KC. I knew places like DFW, SFO were going to be a failure and they almost seemed like desperate moves. Why would anyone from DFW want to fly anything that is not a One World Partner, same with SFO/Star Alliance Airlines
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

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brewcrew1000 wrote: Thu Aug 30, 2018 2:50 pm IcelandAir should focus on more mid tier cities like KC. I knew places like DFW, SFO were going to be a failure and they almost seemed like desperate moves. Why would anyone from DFW want to fly anything that is not a One World Partner, same with SFO/Star Alliance Airlines


I would imagine that their thought process with those flights was that big cities would have enough Iceland terminating pax. to the point where they wouldn’t be competing as much in the NA to europe market.

I agree that underserved and not at all served markets like KC should be where they put their energies. However, you can fly BA to Europe from KC now in full service economy for same/similar to what you can in Icelandair’s limited service economy.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by beautyfromashes »

It looks like Icelandair is driving down prices for the other carriers. Still a few $100s more expensive, but a few $100s less than last year. Hopefully, this will continue.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by normalthings »

A further reduction in prices probably would mean we don’t get a second direct TATL flight and Icelandair leaves.
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