Pieson, on Dec 21 2006, 12:35 AM, said:
now correct me if im wrong
but as being such a large tourist destination, isnt airfare to orlando generally very cheap?
and perhaps expanding our international flights, that would help lower cost as we increase traffic
of course this is all just blind speculation, but it seems logical
Id like orlando to take over as the central hub in florida(in terms of air travel)
The problem with adding international flights is that as much as the airport administration lobbies for them, it's still up to the airlines to start them up. Orlando has several factors working against it, including but not limited to:
-Lack of a hub for a legacy carrier (i.e. Delta, American, Continental, United, etc.). The American cities with lots of long-haul international routes are mostly the ones that are major hubs for these major airlines-- places like Miami, Atlanta, DC, Philadelphia, New York/Newark, Cincinnati, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Dallas, Houston, Denver, L.A., San Francisco, and Salt Lake City. You'd be hard-pressed to find many transatlantic/pacific routes from cities outside of those listed above. The exceptions are places like Seattle and Boston which have fantastic strategic locations at the corners of our map and draw a lot of business travelers thanks to their huge tech industries and Fortune 500 companies. Then there are cities with significant hubs but few international flights like Phoenix (Southwest, AmericaWest/USAir) and Charlotte (USAir).
-With Delta downsizing its operations here, Orlando is almost in the same boat as cities like St. Louis and Pittsburgh, which both took major hits when their respective airline hubs were dismantled-- St. Louis' TWA being gobbled up by American and Pittsburgh's USAir shifting their focus away from PIT. Our greatest chance for landing some transatlantic/South American routes is by having an airline with a significant presence at MCO. Southwest, Airtran, and Jetblue don't really count in this case because their business plans revolve around domestic routes (with a couple of Caribbean destination exceptions). Their fleets also consist of planes with limited range (A320's, EMB190's, 717's, and 737's) so they don't even have the hardware to pull off non-stop long-haul flights from MCO.
-Orlando is not much of a business traveler city. Now don't get me wrong, we definitely draw a lot of convention traffic. We just aren't home to a lot of major companies that require a lot of business travel between Orlando and overseas cities. We're not a big finance city, don't have a monstrous technology industry (compared to the Bay Area, New York, Boston, Seattle, etc.), we're not into oil like Houston, not an automotive hub like Detroit, not the capital of our country, not a major consulting city...yadda yadda yadda. Those industries have strong commercial ties to places in East Asia and Europe, which we severely lack. Airlines like business travelers because they are not as concerned with ticket prices, their companies usually put them up in First or Business Class, and although they may be fickle, they are more likely to remain loyal to an airline that provides a enjoyable experience.
-What we do--and do very well--is attract leisure travelers, and unfortunately, that is another one of our downfalls. As far as the airline industry is concerned, leisure travelers are cheap. They typically fly coach and are more concerned with fare prices than the product quality, brand loyalty, frequent flyer perks, lounges, and such than their business traveler counterparts. Afterall, when a family of 5 is about to spend $75 a head on tickets per day, hotels, rental cars, and food for 7 days, they tend to pinch pennies when it comes to flying and don't fly First or Business Class. Leisure travelers also like to use frequent flyer miles to book their vacation tickets, which is another thing airlines would prefer they not do. Obviously this puts people in the seats for free instead of filling the seats with paying customers. Yes, the airlines limit the amount of reward seats available on each plane, but the less that are used, the better.
-Our geographic location is not great. Being on the east coast, we're almost out of range for non-stop flights to East Asia with the A346 and 773ER being about the only planes that could handle it. Very few carriers even operate those planes at the moment. We're much nearer to the equator than northern cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, etc., which means planes coming from Europe have to travel quite a bit further to reach us despite being at a reasonable longitude, thanks to the curvature of the earth. For example, it is much easier for an airline to fly from Europe to the Northeast and then have passengers continue to other locales in the Americas from there than to fly from Europe to Florida and have connecting passengers backtrack to cities up north. Virgin Atlantic serves us well but that's because of the great UK-Orlando leisure connection that we have. Then you have Africa, except that hardly anybody flies non-stop to Africa from the U.S. so that's pretty much out of the question. The same is true for the Middle East, Central Asia, and Australia. Finally, we have Central and South America. We're actually in a great geographic location for international routes to places south of us and we already do quite well at serving Caribbean destinations. The only problem is that our friendly neighbor down the road, Miami, already has Latin America covered. I do see expansion to major cities in South America coming online in the future, especially with Orlando's burgeoning Hispanic community.
-We're extremely close to two major international hubs in Miami and Atlanta. Miami essentially being the gateway to the Americas, it connects all places north of it to the Central and South America. The same is true of Atlanta but it also has a larger number of flights to Europe and just so happens to be the second busiest airport in the world (Chicago). These two cities are the primary reason why Orlando doesn't receive more international traffic than it does.
-Orlando just isn't a huge city. Yes, we're 2 million strong and growing at a frantic rate, but that's not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. There are 27 other cities in the U.S. with a larger metropolitan population. It's still less than half the size of Miami or Atlanta. Even if the airlines didn't consider the types of economies in each city, types of passengers, or location, they would select to send their planes to Miami or Atlanta just because they are larger markets.
-Orlando is just about as big of an origin and destination city as you can get. This means that people tend to NOT use MCO to connect to other destinations. This is the result of being a huge vacation destination and not being a major international airline hub. So while we are one of the busier airports in the world, it is mostly thanks to having the greatest number of non-stop domestic routes in the U.S. We bring in tons of passengers from all sorts of podunk towns in the U.S., but aside from the UK and Germany, we don't have a huge fanbase in the rest of Europe.
Now for Orlando's advantages:
-The introduction of the 787 should really help to open up the world and pair lower yield cities that were previously too far from each other to warrant a direct link. Perhaps down the road we might see 787's bringing people non-stop from Tokyo, Sydney, Dubai, and the like.
-Miami and Atlanta are much older airports that are quickly running out of room to expand. They have matured as airports and are extremely expensive for airlines to operate in. Fortunately, MCO has more than enough room to expand and has plans for a new international terminal as well as dozens of additional gates and new facilities. While landing fees certainly are not cheap here, I do believe they're better than at ATL and MIA.
-Orlando is growing at a very fast pace, as is the diversity of its economy. Greater population + more business travelers + more leisure travelers = More demand for international service.
bic's Predictions:
I don't see a whole lot changing in the very near term, but in a couple of years I wouldn't be surprised to see non-stop routes to Paris (Air France), Milan (Alitalia), Madrid (Iberia), additional service to Amsterdam (KLM/Northwest), Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and the Caribbean.
Bleh..I could go on for much longer on this subject but I'm tired of typing. Here's MCO's international route map for a visual aid:
Edited by bic, 21 December 2006 - 01:58 AM.
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