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Richmond International Airport


eandslee

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4 hours ago, eandslee said:

Serously!!!  This pisses me off!  Richmond is the freakin’ capital city for Pete’s sake!!!  Gee, where are RIC’s west coast flights???!!!

Although, this probably has something to do with connecting the two major Naval Bases in the US. 

Probably? I’d say almost definitely.  And a direct flight to LA or SF would be much better for Richmond from an economic perspective.  

Edited by wrldcoupe4
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On 11/23/2018 at 2:51 PM, eandslee said:

Serously!!!  This pisses me off!  Richmond is the freakin’ capital city for Pete’s sake!!!  Gee, where are RIC’s west coast flights???!!!

Although, this probably has something to do with connecting the two major Naval Bases in the US. 

Surprised ORF to SAN did not exist to begin with.

Edited by Shakman
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16 minutes ago, DowntownCoruscant said:

Just hitting the October number for the last two months would push the total to around 4.1 million.

Absolutely!  In fact, it can be less just to hit 4 million passengers...RIC will need to hit about 315K (a little more) per month in Nov and Dec!!  So close!  Very achievable!

Edited by eandslee
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4 minutes ago, jbjust said:

I was more excited about that number until I went to wikipedia and looked to see where that would put us — still probably out of the top 50 (extrapolating a bit based on 2017 numbers). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_the_United_States.

RDU is almost 50% busier than we are!!!  

 

Raleigh has a lot of traffic due to the schools down there. It also serves a larger population. Not only the Raleigh-Durham area but Greensboro, Winston-Salem and pretty much all of eastern North Carolina. Richmond really just serves the Richmond area and probably western areas of Virginia. Yes, I'm sure we get people from Hampton Roads and NOVA but for the most part they fly out of their own area. Taking a wild guess I think Raleigh airport serves much more people than 50% of the population Richmond does.

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15 hours ago, DowntownCoruscant said:

Just hitting the October number for the last two months would push the total to around 4.1 million.

October sometimes looks like a 4th summer month at RIC, very busy across the board with business travel, value season travel, a long-weekend holiday, a strong meetings & conventions season, favorable weather (except for the occasional tropical flare up). Only Halloween works against air travel.

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5 hours ago, jbjust said:

I was more excited about that number until I went to wikipedia and looked to see where that would put us — still probably out of the top 50 (extrapolating a bit based on 2017 numbers). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_the_United_States.

RDU is almost 50% busier than we are!!!  

 

That number you looked at is just for boardings, not total passengers.  When taking total passenger in account RDU actually served over 11 million passengers .  All the top 50 airports severed over 8 million passengers.  I do think RIC bleeds a lot of passengers to Dulles and National, once RIC gets some flights out west plus some added frequencies to popular destinations, I think you guys could easily reach the 5 or 6 million mark, still out of the top 50 though.  

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  • 3 weeks later...

This is great news about growth at RIC.  One glaring omission is Southwest.  They have recently announced they are scaling down service to Atlanta because the numbers aren't good.  Since ATL is the only city with direct service from RIC, this can't be good news.  I've always been disappointed that Southwest barely serves Richmond.  Rather than offer service to the west, they have copied Delta by offering connecting service through Atlanta.  What happened to their creativity and the premise of taking no prisoners.  While I would hate to see Richmond lose Southwest, I don't see it as a huge loss.  Their entry into the market was designed to fail.  Other airlines are growing in Richmond, yet Southwest always seems to be the exception. I live on the west coast and can never seem to find a flight that is convenient and affordable.  Perhaps flack4ric can help us understand why Southwest service has been less than stellar.  I know that Louisville has recently succeeded in securing a nonstop to LAX and to MSY.  While they offered incentives to the airlines and RIC has historically not done this, maybe its time to try something new.  Waiting for Southwest to offer anything is torturous  and disappointing.  Even Charleston recently announced nonstop service to London! There has to be something that has to be tried; something has to be done differently.  If Charleston, a city half the size of Richmond can get service on British Airways, Richmond can accomplish similar goals.  Granted, Dulles gets a lot of Richmond's traffic but Charleston loses traffic to Atlanta and Charlotte.  Its time for RIC to live up to its potential and stop giving in to excuses.

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Southwest was only here because it was a legacy route that AirTran Airways had before the merger. 

I don’t think they ever had a company strategy to be in Richmond, let alone expand a network out of Richmond.

I like Southwest for leisure travel, but Richmond’s bread and butter is the business market. RIC has a few other  airlines servicing the leisure market - hopefully they continue to expand!

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There is some truth to what you are saying.  However, when Southwest announced they would be flying from Norfolk, they also announced their intention to fly from Richmond.  Therefore, they did have a company strategy to be in Richmond.  Shortly after the announcement, the economy tanked and their strategy changed.  As you stated, after being picked up by AirTran, Richmond eventually was picked up by SWA. However, their enthusiasm had waned. When they announced Norfolk, they spoke enthusiastically of Richmond. Typically, they never discussed new cities in advance so this was very unusual. They kept their promise to fly into RIC but they didn't open any new destinations and they still haven't.

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Just got an update on the status of the Terminal A expansion at the airport.  Apparently, construction is delayed a bit, but will start in earnest early to mid January.   This is a delay from mid to end of Nov 18.  Hope there are no more delays.  Fingers crossed. 

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  • 1 month later...

@eandslee, Concourse A work is underway. We're weeks away from seeing anything vertical, but utility work is clearly visible from Gate A7.

@wrldcoupe4, exactly correct. Nice to have surpassed the 4M milestone. 3M was accomplished in 2006, but we don't think it will take a dozen years to make RIC 5M.

 

RIC 4M TY Info.jpg

Edited by flack4ric
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