Charlotte-Douglas Airport (CLT) Expansion

[carolina1792]

3 hours ago, turbocraig said:

That's a little shocking to me that they'd ditch BNA.   I would think that between entities like Nissan, Vanderbilt, HCA, etc., plus the tourism industry which, granted has been fairly nonexistent this past year but it's not going to be that way forever, that they'd be able to make a go of it and want to maintain a decent service level there.  Plus just being one of the hot "It" cities at the moment.   Interesting.

Nissan isn't in good shape at all, atm. 

[xapostrophe]

12 hours ago, HopHead said:

Delta has always flown to the hub cities (Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Detroit, La Guardia) from Charlotte for as long as I can remember. What ever happens at RDU won't impact those destinations other than maybe frequency.  I think they had around 25 destinations (give or take) prior to the pandemic and many of those got cut like everyone else. Nashville has a pretty big operation for Southwest so perhaps that's why too.  Would rather JetBlue or Southwest open up more destinations here to drive prices down once traffic gets more normalized come 2022 and beyond. 

On a more related CLT topic, has the new air traffic control tower fully opened yet? I thought it was suppose to last year, but assume the pandemic pushed it back. 

The tower is not open.   Work nearly stopped on it.  Covid really messed that up apparently.  My friends who work in the tower say there's no timeline they know of.

[Miesian Corners]

16 hours ago, HopHead said:

On a more related CLT topic, has the new air traffic control tower fully opened yet? I thought it was suppose to last year, but assume the pandemic pushed it back. 

Both towers are being operated. Lots of testing has to occur before the old one is shuttered. Last I heard, it was to be decommissioned in late May. 

[LKN704]

Are there any updated, publicly accessible plans/diagrams for how the automated people mover (APM) would be integrated into existing airport infrastructure/main terminal building?

I recall seeing older plans from LS3P from the early 2000s that had the APM running at ground level in between the daily deck and north parking lot, before ending at a station connected to the current Main Terminal Building. The plans also showed  a central "hub" station located where the soon to be decommissioned control tower that was connected directly to both Concourse E an what was then supposed to be a separate international terminal (now Concourse A North). This central "hub station" also had a hotel. 

I haven't seen anything about the APM since then, and so much has changed both at CLT and within the industry since then. I would imagine that the city would want the APM to replace shuttles to/from the existing daily decks/lots, as well as the long term lots, however I just don't see how everything would integrate, especially seeing how adverse the city seems to tunneling any sort of transit. 

[LKN704]

I hate double posting, but the Lufthansa Group published their Summer 2021 schedule today (https://www.lufthansaexperts.com/shared/files/lufthansa/public/mcms/folder_102/folder_6073/file_149503.pdf).

Charlotte service is proposed to resume in May with an A350. Glad to see they remain committed to the market. 

[tozmervo]

5 hours ago, LKN704 said:

Are there any updated, publicly accessible plans/diagrams for how the automated people mover (APM) would be integrated into existing airport infrastructure/main terminal building?

I recall seeing older plans from LS3P from the early 2000s that had the APM running at ground level in between the daily deck and north parking lot, before ending at a station connected to the current Main Terminal Building. The plans also showed  a central "hub" station located where the soon to be decommissioned control tower that was connected directly to both Concourse E an what was then supposed to be a separate international terminal (now Concourse A North). This central "hub station" also had a hotel. 

I haven't seen anything about the APM since then, and so much has changed both at CLT and within the industry since then. I would imagine that the city would want the APM to replace shuttles to/from the existing daily decks/lots, as well as the long term lots, however I just don't see how everything would integrate, especially seeing how adverse the city seems to tunneling any sort of transit. 

I don't have a good way to link directly to the images, but you can find (very) old masterplan imagery on the website of The Wilson Group. You will have to click right a few times, but this was an old concept for the APM, going straight down the middle. I don't think the hourly parking deck design accommodates this (AFAIK). 

[LKN704]

35 minutes ago, tozmervo said:

I don't have a good way to link directly to the images, but you can find (very) old masterplan imagery on the website of The Wilson Group. You will have to click right a few times, but this was an old concept for the APM, going straight down the middle. I don't think the hourly parking deck design accommodates this (AFAIK). 

This is the rendering I was thinking of! You can see the central hub area with the piers leading to Concourse E and A North. 

There's actually a lot of good renderings on that site, including a number of failed projects that didn't come to fruition, such as the international terminal where A North is now. To bad we never got to see that bridge over the taxiway!:

There's also this rendering, which I assume is the Concourse C FIS connector project, which IIRC is still in the works. It will essentially built a another level on top of Concourse C that will lead directly from the low C gates to the FIS area:

Edited March 11, 2021 by LKN704

[Richhamleigh, DC]

Not about Charlotte but there are a few aviation experts here. SW just added MYR.  Do you think there's a chance they'd add AVL?

A long way off, but I was thinking about the explosive growth of the Wilmington-Myrtle Beach corridor...and imaging a single airport shared by both.  Southern Brunswick, near the proposed interstate.  It would easily justify more much more service.    Of course, it would a hugely expensive undertaking but int the longer term, much more efficient.  Thoughts?

[Skyybutter]

While we may want SW and JetBlue to expand so prices drop in Charlotte,  neither company has employees based here, nor do they contribute $$ to the city on a level even close to AA.

   I dont know, Charlotte is still blessed with direct flights to destinations that  Austin, Tampa, and Nashville would die for! 

  Id rather pay a bit more and keep AA strong and expanding  in CLT, then to see SW add a flight to Shrevesport. My 2 cents.

[elrodvt]

Are you mostly a business traveler? If so I understand your perspective. However, as a  leisure traveler I totally disagree. I guess if it was ”a bit more” I could be convinced but it's not -  It's a lot more (at least it never is when I look for flights which arbitrarily isn't very scientific) . Plus if AA ever pulled out we have nothing to fall back on. They hold all the cards. .

Coming from Denver I know how it *could* work. They're an important location for United but a lot of other airlines fly from there and there is true competition as a result. Granted they have a geographic advantage that we'll never have but we could do a LOT better. 

[tozmervo]

6 hours ago, Skyybutter said:

While we may want SW and JetBlue to expand so prices drop in Charlotte,  neither company has employees based here, nor do they contribute $$ to the city on a level even close to AA.

   I dont know, Charlotte is still blessed with direct flights to destinations that  Austin, Tampa, and Nashville would die for! 

  Id rather pay a bit more and keep AA strong and expanding  in CLT, then to see SW add a flight to Shrevesport. My 2 cents.

That's a dangerous fallacy that somehow AA is helping Charlotte or will help Charlotte because mi casa es su casa. AA would screw the airport and Charlotte over at the drop of a hat if it was in their financial interest. Just as with the city as a whole trying to diversify it's industries, a healthy airport would have far more diversified airlines. Monopolies only benefit the AA c-suite and board, they never benefit anyone else, period.

Look at it another way: if you are an AA employee in Charlotte and have a falling out, you're screwed. There aren't other airlines you can hop over to. You have to move. Just as there's no competition in the market, there's no competition for workforce.

[LKN704]

Exactly. 

While highly, highly unlikely, AA would have no problems dropping everything in Charlotte and closing up shop if it was beneficial to their balance sheet. While one cannot discredit the billions in economic output AA provides to both Charlotte and North Carolina nor the amount of employees they have in Charlotte, airlines aren't a charity and don't provide an overabundance of flights to their fortress hub as a form of community service.

The city should absolutely have some sort of air service development program designed to attract both new carriers and new routes. I've read before that the city has been wary to run such a program to avoid stepping on US/AA's toes,  but other cities do not seem to have such fear. Both Atlanta and DFW have such programs (as do most airports). Dallas has also been open to giving out incentives to new/returning carriers. 

[CltFlyer]

AA's focus on CLT through Covid has put anyone who isn't AA in a very tough position in an already over-saturated market.

Southwest's expansion of flights to STL, DEN, and PHX has been a very nice surprise, and one that hopefully continues post covid.  I'm not sure we see them add Florida, but I could definitely see Atlanta being added at some point to serve effectively the same markets.

Delta has recovered nicely (minus no JFK return yet and the discontinuation of CVG).  MSP and DTW are back to pre-covid frequencies and ATL is back to 8-9 daily.  SLC has seen a increase to 2x daily.  Hopefully this will be enough to fuel A North Part 2 and a Delta Skyclub.  They look to remain a clear 2nd best in CLT.

Unfortunately Frontier and Spirit will likely stagnate until pre-covid demand begins to return.  There just isn't ideal demand for either right now.  (worthy to note that Allegiant has continued to grow up the road at Concord)

United will be interesting to watch post-covid as they have always been 3rd wheel of the current big 3, but were looking for more gates pre-covid.

There is a chance Jetblue adds JFK back and FLL as part of AA's new partnership with B6.  This will be something watch in the coming months.

From an international perspective:

Lufthansa will hopefully return in May, and despite Volaris dropping to weekly in March and April.  They have remained largely resilient throughout covid.

Air Canada is somewhat of a wild card.  The European market will be down for several years and this is a large part of their demand.  It also seems that AA is focusing on demand to Toronto and Montreal through CLT.  I'm not sure what space there is left for Air Canada at CLT at this moment.

I also wonder if AA's focus on CLT and retiring of the A330 fleet will maybe open the door/increase the likelihood of BA returning to CLT, but this also remains to be seen.

[Miesian Corners]

3 hours ago, tozmervo said:

That's a dangerous fallacy that somehow AA is helping Charlotte or will help Charlotte because mi casa es su casa. AA would screw the airport and Charlotte over at the drop of a hat if it was in their financial interest. Just as with the city as a whole trying to diversify it's industries, a healthy airport would have far more diversified airlines. Monopolies only benefit the AA c-suite and board, they never benefit anyone else, period.

Look at it another way: if you are an AA employee in Charlotte and have a falling out, you're screwed. There aren't other airlines you can hop over to. You have to move. Just as there's no competition in the market, there's no competition for workforce.

To quote Jerry Orr, there are two types of cities in America: Those who have hub airports and those who want them.

[KJHburg]

One of the reasons is Charlotte is attractive as a hub besides the location is our landing fees are much lower than other airports and if I remember correctly one of the lowest landing fees of any major airport.  

[CLT2014]

Raleigh-Durham is pretty much a perfect proxy for what our airport would look like without a mega hub from AA. Eliminate 90 nonstop destinations like Portland, Honolulu, Cleveland, San Antonio, San Diego, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Glacier National Park, Jackson Hole, pretty much the entire Caribbean outside of maybe seasonal Cancun/Montego Bay/Punta Cana, Mexico City, Cabo, Costa Rica, Belize, Bermuda, et....... also throw out Rome, Madrid, Dublin, Paris, anything in the plains that isn't in Texas/Minneapolis/ Denver, et... we'd MAYBE be lucky to have nonstop service to London (maybe). 

So yes, a nonstop from CLT - San Antonio is more expensive than a city like LAX - San Antonio, but most cities in our population range don't have service to San Antonio at all.  Pre-COVID, RDU had 1 -2 flights to LAX.... we had 6  - 7. They were dreaming for service to San Diego and Portland.... we were dreaming of service to Qatar. So yes, we are teased with the ridiculous amount of nonstop destinations we have for a city of our size and sometimes it comes at a premium. Cincinnati, Raleigh, Cleveland, Sacramento, Austin, San Antonio, Richmond, et.... are what our airport SHOULD look like. Instead we have an airport that rivals cities like Seattle, Houston, and Boston.

Honestly, the airport and the skyline provide a big deception to making Charlotte feel bigger than it is. Here we are.... the 21st largest CSA. Similar in size to San Antonio, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Kansas City, et... and we have a full 777 aircraft sitting at a gate at London-Heathrow Airport headed to little old Charlotte alongside the likes of planes bound for Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia, Boston, et.

There are also only a handful of cities that are hubs to multiple airlines (population range 3.6 million - 22.5 million in CSA):

• Los Angeles: American, Alaska, Delta, Southwest, United
• Seattle: Alaska and Delta
• San Francisco: Alaska, United, Southwest (Oakland)
• Chicago: American, Southwest, United
• Dallas: American, Southwest
• New York area: American, Delta, JetBlue, United
• Washington DC/Baltimore: American, Southwest, United
• Houston: Southwest, United
• Denver: Frontier, Southwest, United
• South Florida: American, JetBlue
• Phoenix: American, Southwest

Single airline hubs (2.6 - 7.2 million in CSA):

• Delta: Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City
• American: Charlotte, Philadelphia

Everybody else: Not a hub. Unless a major vacation destination (like Orlando, Las Vegas, New Orleans, et.) expect to be spending a lot of time either flying to the cities above or connecting in them. 

Edited March 11, 2021 by CLT2014

[CltFlyer]

3 hours ago, LKN704 said:

Exactly. 

While highly, highly unlikely, AA would have no problems dropping everything in Charlotte and closing up shop if it was beneficial to their balance sheet. While one cannot discredit the billions in economic output AA provides to both Charlotte and North Carolina nor the amount of employees they have in Charlotte, airlines aren't a charity and don't provide an overabundance of flights to their fortress hub as a form of community service.

The city should absolutely have some sort of air service development program designed to attract both new carriers and new routes. I've read before that the city has been wary to run such a program to avoid stepping on US/AA's toes,  but other cities do not seem to have such fear. Both Atlanta and DFW have such programs (as do most airports). Dallas has also been open to giving out incentives to new/returning carriers. 

I wonder how much Atlanta and DFW put into their programs financially each year.  It's possible that Charlotte is just too of hard of a sell with so little un-served current demand.  I don't have extensive knowledge in the area, but perhaps the gains of attracting new service simply don't offset the costs.  In their current states,  I'm sure it's much easier to sell Atlanta or DFW for new air service than CLT.  The higher air travel demand in ATL and DFW make it much easier for them to be comfortable putting money into air service development.  CLT is a very unique situation.

 Not that they should be, but I imagine Charlotte is content keeping costs low to please AA rather than spending it on attracting new air service.  The city has also put in quite a bit of money with the new terminal lobby expansion and A North expansion.  Which could also factor in.

Edited March 11, 2021 by CltFlyer

[LKN704]

51 minutes ago, CltFlyer said:

I wonder how much Atlanta and DFW put into their programs financially each year.  It's possible that Charlotte is just too of hard of a sell with so little un-served current demand.  I don't have extensive knowledge in the area, but perhaps the gains of attracting new service simply don't offset the costs.  In their current states,  I'm sure it's much easier to sell Atlanta or DFW for new air service than CLT.  The higher air travel demand in ATL and DFW make it much easier for them to be comfortable putting money into air service development.  CLT is a very unique situation.

 Not that they should be, but I imagine Charlotte is content keeping costs low to please AA rather than spending it on attracting new air service.  The city has also put in quite a bit of money with the new terminal lobby expansion and A North expansion.  Which could also factor in.

Unfortunately I doubt that data is publicly available. However, just last fall DFW announced that an additional 16 million dollars was pumped into their existing air service incentive program to cover landing/operational fees at DFW. I think they give funds to the carrier as well to help promote the new service. 

But I agree I really don't know what the city would be going after if they did have such a program. The only logical non-AA adds I can think of are United to San Francisco (actually surprised this one hasn't come to fruition given the growth of their hub there) and possibly JetBlue or Delta to LA. Alaska has apparently taken a look at Charlotte numerous times but they have found that there wasn't room for another carrier on CLT-SEA. 

 

[CltFlyer]

14 minutes ago, LKN704 said:

Unfortunately I doubt that data is publicly available. However, just last fall DFW announced that an additional 16 million dollars was pumped into their existing air service incentive program to cover landing/operational fees at DFW. I think they give funds to the carrier as well to help promote the new service. 

But I agree I really don't know what the city would be going after if they did have such a program. The only logical non-AA adds I can think of are United to San Francisco (actually surprised this one hasn't come to fruition given the growth of their hub there) and possibly JetBlue or Delta to LA. Alaska has apparently taken a look at Charlotte numerous times but they have found that there wasn't room for another carrier on CLT-SEA. 

 

I think Alaska entering One World/code sharing with AA greatly improves our chances of Alaska finally starting Seattle-Charlotte.  Granted, I've thought the same thing about British Airways and that hasn't worked out thus far..

[TCLT]

2 hours ago, CltFlyer said:

Not that they should be, but I imagine Charlotte is content keeping costs low to please AA rather than spending it on attracting new air service. 

What "new" air service should CLT be going after though. There's next to nothing another airline can add that AA doesn't already fly. So I'm not sure what incentive the airport has to seek out other airline service. And the passenger traffic is only 20% local which isn't a huge slice of the pie for other airlines to come in and bleed money to fight for. If another airline starts service that poses any significant threat to AA's local nonstop market share, AA can offer absurdly low rates on the offending CLT-XXX city pair. Since AA has such a huge hub operation, it's likely only a small fraction of their plane is filled with passengers on that city pair, while another airline probably has a much larger percentage of such passengers since they carry little to no transfer passengers through CLT. AA can easily make a nonstop route grossly unprofitable for another airline while taking a minimal financial hit and merely wait until the other airline throws in the towel and abandons the service. For that reason it's highly unlikely you'll see any significant other airline expansion beyond their own hub cities.

And CLT2014's point is also really really important. CLT wouldn't be the world's 4th largest hub if we had robust inter-airline competition here. And Charlotte wouldn't be attracting Fortune 100 HQ's without the large hub.

[a2theb]

16 hours ago, TCLT said:

What "new" air service should CLT be going after though. There's next to nothing another airline can add that AA doesn't already fly. So I'm not sure what incentive the airport has to seek out other airline service. And the passenger traffic is only 20% local which isn't a huge slice of the pie for other airlines to come in and bleed money to fight for. If another airline starts service that poses any significant threat to AA's local nonstop market share, AA can offer absurdly low rates on the offending CLT-XXX city pair. Since AA has such a huge hub operation, it's likely only a small fraction of their plane is filled with passengers on that city pair, while another airline probably has a much larger percentage of such passengers since they carry little to no transfer passengers through CLT. AA can easily make a nonstop route grossly unprofitable for another airline while taking a minimal financial hit and merely wait until the other airline throws in the towel and abandons the service. For that reason it's highly unlikely you'll see any significant other airline expansion beyond their own hub cities.

And CLT2014's point is also really really important. CLT wouldn't be the world's 4th largest hub if we had robust inter-airline competition here. And Charlotte wouldn't be attracting Fortune 100 HQ's without the large hub.

Spot on. AA becomes loss leaders on any route that a competitor attempts to install until it no longer makes financial sense for a their competitor to continue.

 

Don't think we will ever see another mainline sink their claws in here unless AA pulls back at some point. I however do think we will see more B6 service with the JV and the possibility of AS service (namely CLT>SEA) as they roll into Oneworld but I think it'll be on AA metal. I also unfortunately don't see any LCCs increasing service here since they aren't already here and we aren't a leisure destination.  

[tozmervo]

Some time back, there was some data that CLT had the most significant airline monopoly of large airports with AA running something like 75%+ of the flights. Does anyone remember those statistics? Where's a reference librarian when you need one. 

[TCLT]

Some time back, there was some data that CLT had the most significant airline monopoly of large airports with AA running something like 75%+ of the flights. Does anyone remember those statistics? Where's a reference librarian when you need one. 

AA controls about 90% of CLT’s traffic.

[BarrenLucidity]

This is from 2018 but rings true today https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-an-american-airlines-monopoly-works-for-charlotte-1519225740

Our fortress hub is what saved CLT. 

Edited March 12, 2021 by BarrenLucidity

[LKN704]

Ontario starts 6 May and is now loaded into the schedule. Evening departure from CLT, redeye departure from ONT back into CLT. 

AA's Munich flight now does not operate for Summer 2021 and instead is planned to resume 25 September. Madrid resumption has been pushed back to 3 June...same restart date as Dublin. Frankfurt still appears to be bookable on 6 May but I cannot find the flight on AA.com...it only shows up for booking on Google Flights by booking with British Airways as BA 1555. It's only bookable on AA.com after 3 June as well, so I am guessing it's getting pushed back. Ditto for the second daily London flight...between  6 May and 3 June it's only bookable via British Airways, so I am guessing that is getting pushed back too. 

In regards to Munich, with business travel as low as it is right now, and given that Lufthansa likely has the home-advantage (I would bet that the flight is heavily skewed from the German POS, or at the very least, from the POS of German firms who likely would give preference to Lufthansa over AA) and seems committed to restart flights this summer, there really isn't room for two carriers in the market. 

Edited March 14, 2021 by LKN704