Tallahassee Regional Airport

[Florida]

This doesn't have to be seen as bad news. We may have the opportunity to lure a discount carrier in during the re-structuring of everything. Traffic at our airport has dropped so much this year, its almost said to watch.

[poonther]

This doesn't have to be seen as bad news. We may have the opportunity to lure a discount carrier in during the re-structuring of everything. Traffic at our airport has dropped so much this year, its almost said to watch.

I hope your optimism rings true TJ.

[Florida]

I do as well. I haven't flown commercial from our airport since AirTran's departure... I know there are many others like myself.

[poonther]

I do as well. I haven't flown commercial from our airport since AirTran's departure... I know there are many others like myself.

I have several times and most of my flights have been full. But I've seen the stats too. Maybe it's just the times I've flown....high peak times.

[Florida]

I'm thinking that's what it is, Poonther. The numbers don't lie... at least they shouldn't unless you're using an electronic voting machine in the State of Florida. (You'll catch that in the parking lot). It's sad to see things were going so well around 2002-2004 only to drop off now.

I wish it were possible to get Southwest Airlines. I KNOW people would use them.

[south park county]

Things do seem to be at a low ebb on the commercial side of our airport, but perhaps this can be attributed to the nature of the business cycle. As Tallahassee grows, so too should our airport.

[poonther]

In the spirit of TJ's optimism, the numbers for October 2006 are up a little and about as close to last year's numbers as we've gotten all year. Hopefully this shows a little bit of an upswing trend?

TLH Airport Stats

[Florida]

trend?

[SkyDave]

The main reason for the lower numbers is due to reduced capacity brought about by the bankruptcies of all the major carriers that serve the Tallahassee Airport. Air traffic is down every where NWA, US Airways, and Delta fly. The markets hardest hit were the small to medium sized markets like Tallahassee.

The good news for Tallahassee is that because it is a business / government market our flights are usually full. Therefore, all the airlines serving us have added flights this year. This increase in capacity is why the numbers are starting to move upwards.

Lastly, I don't believe the US Airways offer for Delta will be the only one. Look for both United and NWA to make a competing offer. I believe United has the best chance of making it happen because they have the best business case. Their international flights to the Orient match well with Deltas international flights to Europe and Latin America.

[poonther]

trend?

Well one month COULD be the beginning of a trend. I was trying to continue w/your optimism TJ, don't knock me for it man.

SkyDave I thought this topic would interest you! Good to hear from you on it. I agree w/your reasoning of why all the trouble at small and mid-sized airports.

I hope United does make a better offer for Delta. That merger would benefit TLH more than a US Airways/Delta merger.

I've also read that Continental maybe be a serious contender later? What do you think about that? Still I think a United merger would benefit TLH best of all the scenarios.

[Florida]

I like the way you look to the bright side of things Poonther. However, I'm still curious about why we continue to avoid the discount carrier subject. Put it this way, "What would Tallahassee be like if we didn't have any discount stores, like Wal-Mart, or Target"? Sure people would continue to shop, but not half as many would have the money for the goods they want!

FIRE ALARM... I must go!

[poonther]

I like the way you look to the bright side of things Poonther. However, I'm still curious about why we continue to avoid the discount carrier subject. Put it this way, "What would Tallahassee be like if we didn't have any discount stores, like Wal-Mart, or Target"? Sure people would continue to shop, but not half as many would have the money for the goods they want!

FIRE ALARM... I must go!

Was that a real fire alarm?

Oh I'm certainly for a discount airline for sure and would fly them as my primary carrier no matter who it was. However, I don't want to get my hopes up too high after the AirTran fiasco that happened here.

If we did get another discount airline, would Delta or the new merger Delta pull their dirty tricks again and drop their prices to match AND change their schedules to almost match and mirror those departure/arrival times of the discount airline like they did when AT was here? And worst of all, would the "sheep and lemmings" just continue to fly Delta like they did when AT was here not realizing why those Delta flights were so cheap now?

Hey if the local masses can't navigate a simple round-about and re-elect Rackleff and Proctor, what makes us think they'll be smart enough to change carriers?

P.S. I don't buy the AT failed here b/c of they use to be ValueJet and they crashed into the Everglades and everyone remembers that and would not fly them. That happened almost 400 miles from here. I remember that day vividly b/c I lived 10 miles from the crash site and I never thought about it once when I boarded AT. That crash certainly doesn't seem to be affecting AT's markets including FLL and MIA b/c they seem to be booming at ATL airport. Makes me sorta sad when I see their planes at ATL.

[Go Gators]

Was that a real fire alarm?

Oh I'm certainly for a discount airline for sure and would fly them as my primary carrier no matter who it was. However, I don't want to get my hopes up too high after the AirTran fiasco that happened here.

If we did get another discount airline, would Delta or the new merger Delta pull their dirty tricks again and drop their prices to match AND change their schedules to almost match and mirror those departure/arrival times of the discount airline like they did when AT was here? And worst of all, would the "sheep and lemmings" just continue to fly Delta like they did when AT was here not realizing why those Delta flights were so cheap now?

Hey if the local masses can't navigate a simple round-about and re-elect Rackleff and Proctor, what makes us think they'll be smart enough to change carriers?

P.S. I don't buy the AT failed here b/c of they use to be ValueJet and they crashed into the Everglades and everyone remembers that and would not fly them. That happened almost 400 miles from here. I remember that day vividly b/c I lived 10 miles from the crash site and I never thought about it once when I boarded AT. That crash certainly doesn't seem to be affecting AT's markets including FLL and MIA b/c they seem to be booming at ATL airport. Makes me sorta sad when I see their planes at ATL.

Plus AirTran is flourishing in most markets it serves.

[Florida]

Was that a real fire alarm?

Oh I'm certainly for a discount airline for sure and would fly them as my primary carrier no matter who it was. However, I don't want to get my hopes up too high after the AirTran fiasco that happened here.

If we did get another discount airline, would Delta or the new merger Delta pull their dirty tricks again and drop their prices to match AND change their schedules to almost match and mirror those departure/arrival times of the discount airline like they did when AT was here? And worst of all, would the "sheep and lemmings" just continue to fly Delta like they did when AT was here not realizing why those Delta flights were so cheap now?

Hey if the local masses can't navigate a simple round-about and re-elect Rackleff and Proctor, what makes us think they'll be smart enough to change carriers?

P.S. I don't buy the AT failed here b/c of they use to be ValueJet and they crashed into the Everglades and everyone remembers that and would not fly them. That happened almost 400 miles from here. I remember that day vividly b/c I lived 10 miles from the crash site and I never thought about it once when I boarded AT. That crash certainly doesn't seem to be affecting AT's markets including FLL and MIA b/c they seem to be booming at ATL airport. Makes me sorta sad when I see their planes at ATL.

It makes me very sad to see them everywhere but here. It was so unfortunate that Delta did what they did forcing them out of our market.

[poonther]

It makes me very sad to see them everywhere but here. It was so unfortunate that Delta did what they did forcing them out of our market.

Was it Delta's fault or was it the citizens of our region for not supporting them?

What we did learn IMHO is that Delta is no friend to Tally. They CAN fly us in and outta here cheaper, but we are a captive market and they know it, so they can milk us for all it's worth once the competition is gone.

This is why I hate to give them my money, but I do sometimes.

[SkyDave]

Was it Delta's fault or was it the citizens of our region for not supporting them?

What we did learn IMHO is that Delta is no friend to Tally. They CAN fly us in and outta here cheaper, but we are a captive market and they know it, so they can milk us for all it's worth once the competition is gone.

This is why I hate to give them my money, but I do sometimes.

Poonther, I'm with you on that !!!!

I am personally pulling for United to merge with Delta. This would be a tremendous win for Tallahassee. We could get more direct access to the mid-Atlantic markets and Chicago. Our prices will be lower due to competition with US Airways which is branding itself as a discount airline.

The only way we get a discount carrier (Southwest, Jet Blue) is for passenger usage to continue to increase. We must make the business case that we could support a discount carrier. This will probably be a slow process due to the lack of marketing by our airport to the entire region. However, the good folks at TLH may be working hard at convincing the current airlines to do more point to point destinations from Tallahassee thereby avoiding the hubs. I believe this is our best long term strategy. We need those non-stop flights to our top ten destinations to be full. Many of those destinations(i.e. NYC, Washington, Chicago, Boston) would provide the hard evidence we need to show the discount carriers ths REGION is strong enough to support them plus the legacy carriers.

[Florida]

Was it Delta's fault or was it the citizens of our region for not supporting them?

What we did learn IMHO is that Delta is no friend to Tally. They CAN fly us in and outta here cheaper, but we are a captive market and they know it, so they can milk us for all it's worth once the competition is gone.

This is why I hate to give them my money, but I do sometimes.

It was Delta's fault. Delta was jealous of the fact that the city was offering AirTran a subsidy to be here in this market, while they felt they were being left out. To spite the efforts of the city, Delta lowered its fares, and even created a route to Tampa to compete with AirTran. People would choose Delta's reputation over AirTran's and they knew it, which is why sales for AirTran fell as Delta ate into their market share. And just as most of us in-the-know expected, Delta jacked up the prices, no soon as the final day AirTran served this market.

[AlaninTally]

"However, the good folks at TLH may be working hard at convincing the current airlines to do more point to point destinations from Tallahassee thereby avoiding the hubs. I believe this is our best long term strategy. "

Hear Hear, anything to avoid the hub of Atlanta would be nice. It "seems" to have gotten worse in terms of delays and such. But point to point hopefully helps in cost. I don't want to go back to the days where a flight from Tally to the Atlanta hub is more expensive that the flight from Atlanta to my destination.

[blueheronNC]

It was Delta's fault. Delta was jealous of the fact that the city was offering AirTran a subsidy to be here in this market, while they felt they were being left out. To spite the efforts of the city, Delta lowered its fares, and even created a route to Tampa to compete with AirTran. People would choose Delta's reputation over AirTran's and they knew it, which is why sales for AirTran fell as Delta ate into their market share. And just as most of us in-the-know expected, Delta jacked up the prices, no soon as the final day AirTran served this market.

Well, this is exactly why, simply put, the population base in Tallahassee does NOT support a discount air carrier. Whatever market Jetblue, Southwest, or AirTran enters into, the legacy carriers always attempt to undercut them by taking a short-term operating loss in the market to hopefully drive them out and subsequently experience long-term gains (when they raise fares back up again). It wasn't unique to Tallahassee that Delta did that. It's a by-the-book business tactic to preserve your market share. The only reason discount carriers survive against these predatory tactics in other markets is because there's enough demand to go around to allow discount carriers to garner respectable load factors even in light of these tactics and earn a "legacy" (so to speak) amongst the travelers in that metro. area.

I think Tallahassee attempts to bite off more than it can chew with air service. Objectively said, the service level that our town gets is respectable if not generous considering our size. Show me a town with a population base equal to or less than Tallahassee's that is not a tourist destination that gets airline service from the discount carriers without subsidies. They simply don't exist.

Even a metro. area like Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem NC, with a population of 1.2 million, could not hold on to AirTran when the subsidies dried up. They only get a few mainline jets from Delta, the rest regional jets from the "____ express" carriers. They see 2 million passengers per year. That's with a population four times the size of Tallahassee. However, then you have Raleigh/Durham 1 1/2 hours to the east with a population only slightly larger at 1.4 million that gets 10 million passengers per year, 95% non-connecting O&D passengers. The difference? Raleigh/Durham CREATED a favorable business environment that set the prerequisite demand for both types of carriers. For legacies, low economy class fares are for show, but business class fares earn the dough. Further, you have enough steady startup and entrepreneurial business travel that prefers the discount fares to provide a consistent stream of travel from week to week to make the Jetblue and Southwest successful, AND you have a large population with enough disposable income to satisfy direct O&D flights to vacation destinations.

Tallahassee cannot be a successful O&D market because not enough nascent O&D demand exists to make it more worthwhile to provide direct flights than to just shuttle passengers through hubs. The Tallahassee-JFK NYC flights that Comair ran for a bit could not even fill two 35-seat regional jets every day. Most of the time, they were running half-empty. The roundtrip fares were only around $220 advance purchase. That's pathetic. How can Jetblue be enticed to run 95-seat Embraer jets on the same route with that track record?

As for Southwest, forget it. They don't serve any city that even comes close to the relatively small population of Tallahassee. It's not within their business model.

Sorry if I sound overly pessimistic, but I'm a recovering Tallahassee increased air service fanatic. After living in two large metro. areas since moving away, it seems clearer to me now how far Tallahassee has to progress before the discount carriers will bite.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to buy a roundtrip ticket home to Tallahassee for the holidays, connecting through either Atlanta or Charlotte, which will cost me more than the nonstop roundtrip flight from Raleigh to London, England.

[poonther]

As for Southwest, forget it. They don't serve any city that even comes close to the relatively small population of Tallahassee. It's not within their business model.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to buy a roundtrip ticket home to Tallahassee for the holidays, connecting through either Atlanta or Charlotte, which will cost me more than the nonstop roundtrip flight from Raleigh to London, England.

Not totally true about SW. They fly to Amarillo, Lubbock and Midland/Odessa which are equal to or less than Tally's metro pop. See for yourself: SW Route Map

Less than a trip to Europe? It can be done if you book ahead and don't fly on certain days during the holiday rush. Best of luck.

EDIT: After re-reading your post, there's actually some good news in it. If what you state about the Greensboro airport is factual: a metro pop of 1.2 million and an airport w/2 million passengers, then by comparison, we do pretty good at a metro pop. of 350K and an airport w/1 million passengers. That's a metro w/almost 4 times as many people but an airport w/only 2 times as many passengers. I understand why b/c most Triad folks travel to CLT or RDU to fly, but still that is a bright spot for Tally's airport.

[SkyDave]

Tallahassee cannot be a successful O&D market because not enough nascent O&D demand exists to make it more worthwhile to provide direct flights than to just shuttle passengers through hubs. The Tallahassee-JFK NYC flights that Comair ran for a bit could not even fill two 35-seat regional jets every day. Most of the time, they were running half-empty. The roundtrip fares were only around $220 advance purchase. That's pathetic. How can Jetblue be enticed to run 95-seat Embraer jets on the same route with that track record?

Blueheron, you make some good points.

I talked with the good folks at the airport about the Comair deal. They said that the Comair flight was during a non-peak time and was designed for those who wanted to travel to New York in the morning and return late night same day. (I feel that it was not marketed well to the entire Region. They only ran some newspaper ads locally when the flights initially began.)

They felt given time, this non-stop flight would have made it. Comair was going through its own financial troubles and opted out. NYC remains a top ten destination out of TLH everyday.

As for Southwest, forget it. They don't serve any city that even comes close to the relatively small population of Tallahassee. It's not within their business model.

Southwest serves numerous cities Tallahassee size and smaller. There are many cities throughout the mid-west and southwest USA served by discount carriers such as Southwest, Frontier, and Alaskan Airlines. Like I said earlier how do we choose to market ourselves.... by Census Metro 350K or by Trade area 750K. I choose to see us by trade area...... which is the designated mandate for TLH. ( IMHO)

[Lexy]

Not totally true about SW. They fly to Amarillo, Lubbock and Midland/Odessa which are equal to or less than Tally's metro pop. See for yourself: SW Route Map

Less than a trip to Europe? It can be done if you book ahead and don't fly on certain days during the holiday rush. Best of luck.

EDIT: After re-reading your post, there's actually some good news in it. If what you state about the Greensboro airport is factual: a metro pop of 1.2 million and an airport w/2 million passengers, then by comparison, we do pretty good at a metro pop. of 350K and an airport w/1 million passengers. That's a metro w/almost 4 times as many people but an airport w/only 2 times as many passengers. I understand why b/c most Triad folks travel to CLT or RDU to fly, but still that is a bright spot for Tally's airport.

The thing is, those cities in Texas that are served by SWA are cities that have been served since the 60's by them. That is their original routes when they were just a Texan airline and not what they are today. In many of these cities, SWA is the only carrier there. And all their flights go through Dallas Love Field which is starting to build up better connections. None of those flights are outbound out of the state of Texas for the most part.

[poonther]

The thing is, those cities in Texas that are served by SWA are cities that have been served since the 60's by them. That is their original routes when they were just a Texan airline and not what they are today. In many of these cities, SWA is the only carrier there. And all their flights go through Dallas Love Field which is starting to build up better connections. None of those flights are outbound out of the state of Texas for the most part.

What I figured but was not sure of it. Thanks for the info Lexy.

Still would not SW have to make money on those routes to keep them in operation? Could SW just fly us to either MCO, TPA, FLL and MIA or a few of them which are all in state?

EDIT: Lexy the subject of SW in those "origin" cities got me to thinking so I checked up on their airport web sites. Some of things I found surprised me and may do the same to you also.

Lubbock is served by American Eagle w/flights to DFW; Continental w/flights to IAH; and SW w/flights to DAL, HOU, ELP and out of state to ABQ and LAS

Amarillo is served by American Eagle to DFW, Continental to IAH, Great Lakes to Denver, and SW to Love and out of state to ABQ and LAS

Midland/Odessa is served by American Eagle to DFW, Continental to IAH and SW to HOU, DAL , AUS, ELP and out of state to ABQ and LAS.

Tally metro is bigger than each of these 3 metros.

So I was surprised to learn that SW does have TX flights to other cities than Dallas in each of these metros and they flight out of state flights to each these cities and SW is not the only airline serving each of these cities.

Now will this info bring SW to Tally, no, but the results were interesting.

[Lexy]

Exactly what I figured but was not sure of it. Thanks for the info Lexy.

Still would not SW have to make money on those routes to keep them in operation? Could SW just fly us to either MCO, TPA, FLL and MIA or a few of them which are all in state?

Oh don't be fooled, they make money on them and the ones that don't, survive due to the "history" and the fact that other routes (i.e. anything feeding into Las Vegas for exapmle) help maintain those lower performing routes like something from Amarillo. Once you lay out all the monies from your business, you see where some funds can be diverted to. But I would think that some of those routes are really pushing capacity just simply because SWA is the only airline that serves some of those cities in Texas. I know in Owensboro, KY (a town of only 56,000) they have scheduled service on American Connection to St. Louis about two times a day. Yet most of the time that route is threatened to get shut down due to low PAX counts. It really doesn't make sense at first glance, but when you think about it......you get the idea.

The bottom line is if SWA sees that a profit can be made, they move in and make it. If not, then on to the next stop. Here is an interesting tidbit. When American Airlines had a hub here in Nashville, SWA only had a couple flights a day and that's it. Now that American is gone (thank goodness) Nashville is one of Southwest's bigger Focus Cities and connections points for the south with over 90 flights a day. Now, do most of those flights have majority Nashvillians on them? Not a bit, but a big majority have some. The rest is connecting traffic from places like Jacksonville and Birmingham. These smaller cities in Texas would all feed into Dallas and connect there either on a different plane of same-plane flights to different cities either in Texas or abroad. Hopefully you can make sense from my ramble. LOL!!!!

EDIT: my apologies. They do offer some flights to other, non-Texas cities. But keep in mind that the majority of PAX are flying into Dallas and LAS because of connection availability. The other service providers like Continental, and to a lesser extreme, American most likely have just a few flights a day to their respective hubs. They compete decently due to both airlines having hubs in Texas. Of course, Southwest is based in Dallas FWIW. ABQ and LAS are both connecting points for flights going both eastbound and westbound that cannot be flown from Dallas Love Field due to the Wright Amendment. That is why they fly those routes out of state to just those two cities. There likely isn't any demand for those flights O&D, but due to the ability to connect better in ABQ and, especially, LAS....they fly those routes. Kind of like Jacksonville flights connecting in Baltimore and Nashville.

Now that I think about it, it really doesn't make much sense for Southwest to avoid Tally for as long as they have. Especially given their apparent love for the Florida markets. To that question of "why they don't serve Tally" I have no answer. Except perhaps they just concede the market to Delta and feel as though they wouldn't profit from a station there. I can only assume that is the case. But I will tell you that if Airtran had a hard go of it, that doesn't bode well for Southwest and its plans either. LCC's love to see success of other LCC's to help justify a move in the future in new markets.

poonther, you certainly did surprise me! LOL!!!!

[blueheronNC]

It seems that Pensacola is finding much more success than Tallahassee as of late in attracting mainline carriers and boosting their travel numbers. They have historically been neck-and-neck with us in terms of passenger statistics, but in the past few years they have surged ahead...up to around 1.6 million per year now while TLH flounders. http://www.flypensacola.com/ is a beautiful website, and I wonder why talgov has made our airport's page even less accessible in recent years (go to the talgov main page and try to find the airport's website from there...it's a chore).

Raleigh has done something interesting besides their very successful conversion from a 10 million passenger per year connecting hub under American and Midway to an almost 100% O&D airport with 9.5 million passengers now (no joke, in October some absurdly low number, I think less than 100 passengers, connected through RDU). RDU still maintains a daily 777 nonstop flight to London (Gatwick) on American Airlines, a holdover from the hub days. This flight sees pretty good load factors (~70%), but the real kicker is the very successful subsidy partnership with biotech. companies in the Research Triangle. These companies guarantee two things - one is that their business travelers will fly business class on American to England whenever their travel needs (frequent travel needs) take them to Great Britain. Second, they guarantee that for each day that the flight does not meet profitable revenue expectations, the biotech. firms chip in to bring the daily revenue up to break-even. These companies and Raleigh have found that over the past decade, this strategy is actually the most cost-effective because the nonstop flight garners increased business, which translates to increased revenues, which makes the area more attractive to other corporations, who move in...and the cycle continues. Pretty much nowadays, the biotech. companies don't really have to subsidize this flight much because the first/business class is always flying full, meaning that it turns a profit even if the coach section remains pretty empty. American also uses the RDU-LGW flight to siphon low-revenue discount ticket passengers from Miami and NYC from those nonstop flights to London through Raleigh in order to free up seats from those cities to London for higher-paying customers. So strategically through a business partnership with American and very savvy routing procedures on American's part, a metro. area of 1.4 million sustains a 777 flight across the pond.

I think Tallahassee should explore similar approaches on a smaller scale. No, I'm not talking about the AirTran subsidy farce, because that did not do enough to involve private or even public interests toward guaranteed use of the new service. Tallahassee should attract an airline like Midwest Airways (http://www.midwestairlines.com/MAWeb/) which flies mainline jets outfitted for the business traveler with premium service. Develop a revenue partnership with them catering initially to the BUSINESS and not the leisure/college market to establish an O&D network from TLH to the heavy-hitter cities, like DC, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Dallas with a product that cannot be matched by legacy carriers like Delta. Instead of this DayJet craziness that won't make an impact, a Midwest/TLH partnership would go a long way. Once enough business travelers provide a revenue source for these flights, Midwest could develop a routing strategy that allows for their "saver" service to enter the market to cater to the low-budget crowd as well, and perhaps even a mini-focus city of sorts to pull travelers from South and Central Florida. If Piedmont was able to run a nice little focus city operation out of TLH in the mid 80s with something like 30-35 mainline flights/day, I'm sure this can be achieved in the year 2006.