KCRag Forum

brewcrew1000 wrote: With the exception of San Antonio, Frontier will have now have non-stop competition on all of it's MCI routes this summer.

Competition for the recreational traveler, yes. You gotta look closely at the times of those non-stop routes.

Business travelers tend to be early morning monday/tuesday flights and back thursday/friday.  For KC based people, Delta's flight times are, in general, more business friendly.

brewcrew1000 wrote: And this is why I hate Delta/Northwest, they will do anything to protect it's fortress hubs like MSP and ATL, i can't wait for Southwest to stomp on ATL once the merger is all done. 

It seems Delta is less than thrilled with Frontier's plans to launch MCI-Minneapolis service.

Delta has announced that it will start MCI-BOSTON/AUSTIN/NEW ORLEANS and OMA-DCA on June 6, 2011.

In response, Frontier has up-gauged MCI-BOS to an A319.

With the exception of San Antonio, Frontier will have now have non-stop competition on all of it's MCI routes this summer.

We fly the MCI-BOS route atleast twice a year.  Great news on the airplane upgrade!

On a side note...I was flying back from PHX yesterday and while in line to board, I overheard someone talking about how Southwest is about to buy out Frontier.  Has anyone else heard this?

Southwest bid for Frontier a few years back when they were bankrupt.  Republic ended up winning the bid. I don't know if Republic would want to sell Frontier, they seem to doing a somewhat decent job with the two airlines.

Alaska Airlines is starting Daily service to Seattle in March, very excited, i love flying Alaska

Good to get competition for southwest to seattle.

Frontier flies to Seattle.

Direct?

KCPowercat wrote:Direct?

frontier and southwest each operate one daily non-stop to SEA. this makes 3 daily non-stops!

http://www.flykci.com/FlightInformation ... /Index.htm

Cool....more competition the better.

DaveKCMO wrote:

KCPowercat wrote:Direct?

frontier and southwest each operate one daily non-stop to SEA. this makes 3 daily non-stops!

http://www.flykci.com/FlightInformation ... /Index.htm

The Southwest non-stop ends in January.

Frontier is ending MCI-MKE, there is also rumor that Frontier is ending MCI-SFO and possibly the MCI-HOU routes. Frontier just today announced that they are gutting the Milwaukee Hub, i believe they are only down to service to DEN, NYC, and DC

It has been a few years since this thread has been touched, I thought I would give some recent highlights.

American - 2 flights to LAX, 2 flights to New York started earlier this year
Delta - Saturday only service to Cancun, starting in December
Southwest - San Antonio starting in November
Spirit - Orlando starting in November
Allegiant - Las Vegas starting in October
OneJet - Louisville starting in October
Alaska - Portland added earlier this year
Air Canada - Added a second flight to Toronto

The airport has been on a great ride in terms of traffic, numbers have been up for over 12 months.

Though still fewer flights and nonstops than 15 years ago despite metro growing.

KCI used to be ranked about 30th with passenger traffic, now ranked 38th...

For flight departures, KCI dropped to 42nd, yikes. And down over 3% from last year.

http://www.transtats.bts.gov/airports.a ... ernational

We need a new airport designed to be a hub. The current airport is a complete joke and will keep KC small town.

earthling wrote:Though still fewer flights and nonstops than 15 years ago despite metro growing.

KCI used to be ranked about 30th with passenger traffic, now ranked 38th...

For flight departures, KCI dropped to 42nd, yikes. And down over 3% from last year.

http://www.transtats.bts.gov/airports.a ... ernational

We need a new airport designed to be a hub. The current airport is a complete joke and will keep KC small town.

Agreed, we need to do something with the airport. 15 years ago, or at least prior to 9/11, the airport was strong. Vanguard, Midwest Express both had huge operations. 9/11 combined with consolidation has had an impact, no doubt. The airport has done a nice job developing service over the past 18 months.

earthling wrote:We need a new airport designed to be a hub. The current airport is a complete joke and will keep KC small town.

I'm still sold on the idea of being a regional hub.

There's no connecting flights from Joplin or Springfield of all things.

KC should at least be able to gain a direct flight to all the smaller regional cities, even if most their flights go through Chicago or Denver we should be able to be another choice for connecting flights

Salt Lake City metro is smaller than KC and they serve this purpose for Delta. KC doesn't have a direct flight to any airport closer than MSP from KCI, that's at least two dozen airports we could gain service to. Sure, it's not necessarily going to be Delta, but there's plenty of similar examples out there.

"There's no connecting flights from Joplin or Springfield of all things."

Look at where those flights go. And the size of the plane. An airline will not fly from Springfield to KC and then on to Chicago. Years ago TWA would fly the big planes from here to its StL hub but those planes then went on to other locations, not back to KC. Of course having the TWA maintenance base here didn't hurt.
If people want to fly from those locations to KC they can always charter a plane.

flyingember wrote:

earthling wrote:We need a new airport designed to be a hub. The current airport is a complete joke and will keep KC small town.

I'm still sold on the idea of being a regional hub.

There's no connecting flights from Joplin or Springfield of all things.

KC should at least be able to gain a direct flight to all the smaller regional cities, even if most their flights go through Chicago or Denver we should be able to be another choice for connecting flights

Salt Lake City metro is smaller than KC and they serve this purpose for Delta. KC doesn't have a direct flight to any airport closer than MSP from KCI, that's at least two dozen airports we could gain service to. Sure, it's not necessarily going to be Delta, but there's plenty of similar examples out there.

Salt Lake is smaller but there is less Hub competition from Cities out West because everything is so spread out and there are some decent medium sized cities out west that airlines need but don't want to fly cross country non-stop (Boise, Reno, Spokane, Billings, Albuquerque,Calgary, Edmonton,Sacramento,etc). KC just has too much competition from not very far away and most of these metros are larger (Minneapolis, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Indy) and at one time we had Memphis and St Louis for Hub Competition and I'm sure they want Hubs back.

Delta has 8 direct flights to Denver.

They chose to send traffic to a smaller city instead. Six cities in Montana are served by SLC and not Seattle, despite being relatively equal distances.

Separate, but related note, New Orleans landed British Airways N/S to London.

New Orleans was the 37th-busiest airport (by number of passenger boardings) in the US last year...KCI was #38.

There was an article in the Star a couple years ago noting that about 300 people/day go from KCI to Europe in the summer season.