Nashville International Airport Development thread

[bigeasy]

That seems like tons of work for what exactly?? I wouldn't say the current design is unsafe, and it doesn't appear that this would open up that much land for the airport?

[MLBrumby]

Just a guess, but if you look at new main flow in/out of the airport, it appears the second eastbound ramp would be beefed up for greater volume. That would enable the eventual shutdown of the first e-b ramp (I think the most popular one currently) and free up land for longer term terminal expansion.  

[Jamie Hall]

17 hours ago, markhollin said:

 

 

Certainly a creative solution -- it'll be interesting to see the finished product.

I would've guessed that there are several on-ramp/off-ramp issues elsewhere in Davidson County that needed attention before this I-40/Donelson Pike junction.

[downtownresident]

Allegiant and BNA announced new non stop service starting in May. 

https://www.flynashville.com/news-and-media/press-releases/Pages/allegiant-feb19.aspx

Edited February 12, 2019 by downtownresident
Added photo from press release

[MLBrumby]

Any of those new destinations from Nashville?  Cedar Rapids? Syracuse? Allentown?  Those are almost the sort of size destinations you find at hubs.  Ah... just saw 5 new destinations. Sorry! Missed it the first scan over it. 

Edited February 12, 2019 by MLBrumby

[MidTenn1]

Please, please, someone provide a non-stop from Nashville to Asheville. I would use it once a month to visit my Grandson (oh yeah, and his parents).

[jmtunafish]

3 hours ago, downtownresident said:

Allegiant and BNA announced new non stop service starting in May. 

https://www.flynashville.com/news-and-media/press-releases/Pages/allegiant-feb19.aspx

This speaks volumes about Nashville's growing allure as a vacation destination.

[glamdring269]

5 hours ago, PHofKS said:

Please, please, someone provide a non-stop from Nashville to Asheville. I would use it once a month to visit my Grandson (oh yeah, and his parents).

I would use it to visit Burial Brewery.  But that's just me.

[dmillsphoto]

1 hour ago, glamdring269 said:

I would use it to visit Burial Brewery.  But that's just me.

No... that's not just you...

[MidTenn1]

My daughter said that sometimes they (some airline serving Asheville) cancels flights on the day of the flight because not enough seats were sold.

[jmtunafish]

It looks like Allegiant has Nashville as some sort of focus city.  I wonder how much Allegiant will continue to expand at BNA.  This map is from their web site.

[Pdt2f]

1 hour ago, jmtunafish said:

It looks like Allegiant has Nashville as some sort of focus city.  I wonder how much Allegiant will continue to expand at BNA.  This map is from their web site.

Nashville definitely fits into their “Destinations” grouping. It’s a pretty interesting business model - connecting small/mid-sized rust belt and “flyover” cities that have relatively isolated airports with coastal and vacation hotspots, often using secondary (cheaper) airports. Hopefully they’ll keep expanding at BNA, it’s great tourism revenue and convenient to have the non stop options to these locations if you need to travel there. Plus with most destinations running seasonally 2-4 times per week we can basically handle any and all expansion they could throw our way. 

[titanhog]

^^What's cool is that we're one of very few that's not on the beach somewhere.

[jmtunafish]

8 hours ago, Pdt2f said:

Nashville definitely fits into their “Destinations” grouping. It’s a pretty interesting business model - connecting small/mid-sized rust belt and “flyover” cities that have relatively isolated airports with coastal and vacation hotspots, often using secondary (cheaper) airports. Hopefully they’ll keep expanding at BNA, it’s great tourism revenue and convenient to have the non stop options to these locations if you need to travel there. Plus with most destinations running seasonally 2-4 times per week we can basically handle any and all expansion they could throw our way. 

What makes this even more interesting, to me, is that Allegiant is fairly late to the game.  I mean, Allegiant is pretty new to BNA; it was in Memphis, Knoxville, even the Tri Cities before it came to Nashville.  I wonder if Allegiant planned all along to make Nashville a focus city, or if Nashville's popularity is something that caught them by surprise.

[bigeasy]

Has anyone flown Allegiant before? How do they get away with such cheap flights? Are there just no amenities and lots of extra charges? My sister and her husband have flown it once and I believe they had some bad delays but said it was worth the price. They are flying from Knoxville to NYC next month for like $55. I have vacationed to Sarasota a few times but always fly into Tampa since Southwest was the cheapest. But flying into Sarasota for $65 would be amazing!!

[MetroTN]

I flew it once to Tampa / st. Petersburg from Knoxville. It's a basic no frills airline where you have to pay extra for everything.

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[BnaBreaker]

2 hours ago, jmtunafish said:

What makes this even more interesting, to me, is that Allegiant is fairly late to the game.  I mean, Allegiant is pretty new to BNA; it was in Memphis, Knoxville, even the Tri Cities before it came to Nashville.  I wonder if Allegiant planned all along to make Nashville a focus city, or if Nashville's popularity is something that caught them by surprise.

Well, their entire business model is to connect smaller markets with smaller airports to traditional vacation destinations, which is why they were in every other TN city before Nashville.  They might still not be in Nashville if it had never experienced the huge tourism boom.  If you'll notice on that service map above, Allegiant doesn't have service to places like Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Detroit, Boston etc. Etc. Either.

[e-dub]

Yeah. I always look for new flights to Detroit in these airline announcements, no such luck.

[Pdt2f]

25 minutes ago, bigeasy said:

Has anyone flown Allegiant before? How do they get away with such cheap flights? Are there just no amenities and lots of extra charges? My sister and her husband have flown it once and I believe they had some bad delays but said it was worth the price. They are flying from Knoxville to NYC next month for like $55. I have vacationed to Sarasota a few times but always fly into Tampa since Southwest was the cheapest. But flying into Sarasota for $65 would be amazing!!

Several reasons they’re so cheap:

1. As another poster commented, everything is a la carte, so you have the ability to rack up lots of extra charges. 

2. Until very recently Allegiant never purchased new aircraft, always getting aircraft from other LCC’s for dirt cheap prices. 

3. Like most LCC’s they fly singular, or very few aircraft types to cut down on maintenance costs. Now they use the a320 family, until recently they used MD-83’s and 757’s. Instead of having to have maintenance people and parts for 20 different types, you just have one. 

4. They fly into cheap secondary airports. For instance, Orlando-Sanford is probably much cheaper to fly into than MCO. 

5. They pack seats into their planes. They remove galleys and get super-small lavatories, so they pack like 155 people into an a319, an aircraft that American would put maybe 125 into. It also saves weight to remove galleys and food, which reduces fuel costs.  

6. They presumably contract out all their maintenance and probably have non-union FA’s and pilots. I don’t know this for sure but cheap labor is kind of a given with ULLC’s. 

7. Since they serve small, under-served airports they probably get incentives and waived landing fees for offering desperately wanted/needed service. 

[Pdt2f]

21 minutes ago, e-dub said:

Yeah. I always look for new flights to Detroit in these airline announcements, no such luck.

WN and DL have the route pretty well served. I suspect if/when Spirit enters BNA, they’ll serve DTW. 

[tragenvol]

3 hours ago, bigeasy said:

Has anyone flown Allegiant before? How do they get away with such cheap flights? Are there just no amenities and lots of extra charges? My sister and her husband have flown it once and I believe they had some bad delays but said it was worth the price. They are flying from Knoxville to NYC next month for like $55. I have vacationed to Sarasota a few times but always fly into Tampa since Southwest was the cheapest. But flying into Sarasota for $65 would be amazing!!

We went to Siesta Key flying into St. Pete from Knoxville.  Round trip for two was less than $300.  No complaints, but you have to frame your trip around their schedule.

[volsfanwill]

9 hours ago, bigeasy said:

Has anyone flown Allegiant before? How do they get away with such cheap flights? Are there just no amenities and lots of extra charges? My sister and her husband have flown it once and I believe they had some bad delays but said it was worth the price. They are flying from Knoxville to NYC next month for like $55. I have vacationed to Sarasota a few times but always fly into Tampa since Southwest was the cheapest. But flying into Sarasota for $65 would be amazing!!

the last time i let someone else plan a trip for me, i flew from Knoxville to Orlando on Allegiant.

FYI they dont fly to the Orlando airport, they fly to the Sanford airport.  which was  (2009) a $120 cab ride to our hotel near disney.   after renting a car for the rest of the week, it would have been cheaper to take another airline and pay more. 

[Tenn2Tex]

I'm all for low-cost carriers and their expansion, but, for the life of me, I cannot understand why Europe's low-cost carriers are truly low cost compared to the US given the need to mercilessly tax everything in sight in the EU. Living in Europe, my wife and I did a day trip to Copenhagen from Brussels and flew round trip for less than 25 euro per person. I was able to fly from Brussels to Rome round trip for less than that as well.  Another trip to Dublin was similarly priced also.

[e-dub]

3 minutes ago, Tenn2Tex said:

I'm all for low-cost carriers and their expansion, but, for the life of me, I cannot understand why Europe's low-cost carriers are truly low cost compared to the US given the need to mercilessly tax everything in sight in the EU. Living in Europe, my wife and I did a day trip to Copenhagen from Brussels and flew round trip for less than 25 euro per person. I was able to fly from Brussels to Rome round trip for less than that as well.  Another trip to Dublin was similarly priced also.

Peep game:

 

 

[Tenn2Tex]

5 minutes ago, e-dub said:

Peep game:

 

 

While the video provides some great insight into the low-cost world of flying, I still don't see cost savings so great that Ryan Air can charge 20 bucks for a 2-hour flight but Allegiant charges 200. The video mentions the cost of training FAs and other staff, but what are the real numbers? With no data, it's really speculative and hearsay. In my experience, the EU is obsessed with safety as much, if not more, than the US. With that, I don't see the cost of training an FA for Ryan Air being that much less than an FA for Delta. 

I say all of this to say that I think 9/11 presented ways for US airlines to increase profits while hiding under the guise of security or increased operating costs due to security, etc.  I'm sure this is unpopular, but I'm a firm believer in the almighty dollar and its power amongst almost every facet of our lives..