AUSTIN | ABIA Updates

[texastarkus]

Originally Posted by ATXboom

The data from ABIA's website itself says 3% increase... I would trust the actual airport media release over Austin Chronicles...

Trust me...go with the news release posted on the ABIA web site.

[sammyk]

Originally Posted by texastarkus

There is a pretty big runway/taxiway rehab project going on that'll last almost a year to complete. This will cause both runways to close for extended periods...the same for various taxiways and ramps while concrete panels are replaced or spalls repared. This project also included some lighting work on the east side and some perimeter roadwork and roads to the PAPI's. Runway 17L/35R should open this afternoon with displaced thresholds and will be a daylight runway for a couple of months. Hope that answers your question.

Keep up with closures by NOTAMs....https://www.notams.faa.gov/dinsQueryWeb/

Thanks for that!

[Jdawgboy]

Any data regarding how the new low cost terminal is doing?

[texastarkus]

Originally Posted by Jdawgboy

Any data regarding how the new low cost terminal is doing?

The South Terminal is kicking butt, they're already needing more parking. Viva is tweeking their flight times and expect to see additional flight(s) to Cancun and Monterrey with the last inbound flight as late as 10pm. Additional routes are in the works and will be announced soon - probably mid to late July. They're waiting on delivery of additional aircraft.

Speaking of airport gossip, it seems jetBlue is positioning itself to take gate 25 when American lets it go. This will allow jetBlue to add additional flights and position Austin (KAUS) as an RJ HUB. Who knows what will happen when Frontier goes out of business. Gate 24 will be available allowing Jet Blue to use it as "a pay as you go" gate. Water fountain talk is Jet Blue to Seattle, New Orleans (once Express Jet goes bye-bye), Albuquerque (once Express Jet goes bye-bye), maybe Portland, maybe Denver (if United ceases operations). Who knows where JetBlue will go if American ceases. Don't look so suprised, read about the 50/50 chance American will go under in the WSJ, or Fortune.

[LoneStarMike]

I'm thinking another option for JetBlue might be Gate 22. Back in 1999, when ABIA opened to passenger traffic, CO was only leasing Gates 16 & 18 and flew to EWR and IAH. At some point in time, when they added CLE, I think, they leased a third gate, Gate 22. Based on upcoming flight cuts, CO may no longer need Gate 22 and it's just across the concourse and one gate down from JetBlue's current gate.

I went here:

http://timetables.oag.com/aus/

and compared CO's July 23, 2008 (pre flight-cuts) schedule to their September 23, (post flight-cuts) schedule.

Currently Contintal flies 2 X CLE, 3 X EWR and 11 X IAH for a total of 16 daily departures. In September, they drop the 2 CLE flights, keep the 3 EWR flights and reduce the IAH flights from 11 to 9 for a total of 12 daily departures. I would think they could run 12 flights out of 2 gates and if so, they might consider sub-leasing Gate 22 to JetBlue. Just a thought.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I really feel (hope?) that in spite of fuel prices, JetBlue wouldn't hesitate to add a few additional AUS departures if only they could get more gate space.

[LoneStarMike]

Originally Posted by Jdawgboy

Any data regarding how the new low cost terminal is doing?

We should get a better idea when the airport releases the May passenger statistics (broken out by airline) at this link which should come out sometime in the next two weeks.

BTW someone on airliners.net flew from AUS-Cancun on Saturday, May 17 and returned on Saturday May 24th and posted a trip report with his impression of the trip and lots of photos.

See this link

[Major AWACS]

Originally Posted by texastarkus

Water fountain talk is Jet Blue to Seattle, New Orleans (once Express Jet goes bye-bye), Albuquerque (once Express Jet goes bye-bye), maybe Portland, maybe Denver (if United ceases operations). Who knows where JetBlue will go if American ceases. Don't look so suprised, read about the 50/50 chance American will go under in the WSJ, or Fortune.

Expressjet won't go "bye-bye" altogther they will just stop their branded ops, they will keep serving Austin as COEX.

AA will not "go under". AA will most likely declare bankruptcy which as this point in the market is a good thing as it will allow them to restructure debt and lose their costly pensions (just to name a few). AA is the only legacy major not to declare bankruptcy (CO hasn't in over a decade, the rest post sept 11th). This will allow AA to compete with others that have more recently restructured. Not that I care as I am not an AA fan, I am Platinum on CO and only Gold on AA.

One should be just as worried about jetBlue. They aren't exactly printing the money right now.

Ciao,
AWACS

[LoneStarMike]

Originally Posted by Capt AWACS

Expressjet won't go "bye-bye" altogther they will just stop their branded ops, they will keep serving Austin as COEX.

No they won't. The only COEX flights at AUS right now are the two daily roundtrips to Cleveland. Those are being dropped in September. Continental's remaining AUS flights to IAH and Newark will all be mainline.

[LoneStarMike]

News Brief from the Austin American Statesman

Airport traffic hits record in May


Austin-Bergstrom passenger traffic hits record

Passenger traffic at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport set a record in May.

Almost 836,700 people flew into or out of the airport, topping the previous record of 832,400 in July 2007.

Among major carriers, traffic was up 6 percent at Southwest Airlines, down 3.8 percent at American Airlines and down 10 percent at Continental Airlines.

The biggest percentage gain was at JetBlue Airways, which carried 39,913 passengers, up 74 percent from a year ago. The airline added several nonstops from Austin in recent months.

I've seen a couple of promos for KVUE's 10 PM newscast tonight and this is one of the stories they'll be covering.

[Major AWACS]

Originally Posted by LoneStarMike

News Brief from the Austin American Statesman

Airport traffic hits record in May


Austin-Bergstrom passenger traffic hits record

Passenger traffic at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport set a record in May.

Almost 836,700 people flew into or out of the airport, topping the previous record of 832,400 in July 2007.

Among major carriers, traffic was up 6 percent at Southwest Airlines, down 3.8 percent at American Airlines and down 10 percent at Continental Airlines.

The biggest percentage gain was at JetBlue Airways, which carried 39,913 passengers, up 74 percent from a year ago. The airline added several nonstops from Austin in recent months.

I've seen a couple of promos for KVUE's 10 PM newscast tonight and this is one of the stories they'll be covering.

Great news for KAUS. Again this is due to Austin becoming a focus city for jetBlue getting some Florida traffic to connect out west via AUS. CO is cutting Cleveland (more due to CLE not AUS) and both CO and AA are using some smaller aircraft but frequencies are still good for both CO and AA at AUS.

Overall Good news for AUS in the current market downturn. As I said in some analysis of ABIA in some other threads, it is well poised for future growth.
The "Low cost" terminal is another story but I will say that for later.

Ciao,
AWACS

[Jdawgboy]

I think part of the reason why you are still seeing growth here is because despite the increases in ticket prices and other charges, a large population in the Austin area travel and again, the same population likely has the money to pay for the increased prices.

[Major AWACS]

Originally Posted by Jdawgboy

I think part of the reason why you are still seeing growth here is because despite the increases in ticket prices and other charges, a large population in the Austin area travel and again, the same population likely has the money to pay for the increased prices.

Corporations have travel budgets. I expensed 7 grand of travel just last week, not counting when I am flying our own plane (gas, co pilot pay etc) for company work. Tourist flying will get hit harder than biz flying in this market initially.

Ciao,
FH

[Major AWACS]

tangent news from Viva Aerobus

http://www.jaunted.com/story/2008/6/...m+Viva+Aerobus


Finally, an airline that's dealing with baggage and fuel costs in a creative way. Being in its early start-up days, new Mexican LCC Viva Aerobus is presumably in even greater need of revenue than the competition, but the carrier has figured out a more humane way to help the bottom line.

Viva Aerobus is tackling the problem by, as they put it, giving discounts to "light" passengers. That doesn't mean, as we first wondered, that you have to step on the scales. It simply means that if you are traveling without checked baggage, you can get a $10 discount on your fare.

Sure, this probably means they've increased their fares elsewhere, but isn't it so much nicer for some passengers to get a discount than for a whole bunch of passengers to have to pay an extra fee?

Related Stories:
· Viva Aerobus Will Offer Discounts to "Light" Passengers [Peanuts]
· Viva Aerobus Update: "Madness" in Austin [Jaunted]
· New Airlines: Que Onda, Viva Aerobus? [Jaunted]

[Photo: Charlie_tj]

Ciao,
AWACS

[LoneStarMike]

Someone on another board mentioned that Midwest Connect would be ending its' 2 daily Austin-Kansas City roundtrips effective July 19. Sure enough, when I checked here:

http://timetables.oag.com/aus/

The two flights disappear July 20 and beyond. That's the bad news.

The good news is that Southwest announced the other day that they would be adding two additional flights November. One is a nonstop to DEN (for a total of three daily nonstops) and the other is a nonstop to LAX (for a total of two daily nonstops.)

See this chart

The Midwest Connect service utilized 50-seat CRJ's so that's a loss of 200 daily seats in/out of Austin, but Southwest will most likely use their 137-seat 737's for the DEN & LAX service, so that would be an additional 548 seats in/out of Austin.

[LoneStarMike]

Originally Posted by Capt AWACS

tangent news from Viva Aerobus

Speaking of Viva Aerobus, based on their aircraft seating capacity (148 passengers) and the number of flights operated in May (62 arrivals + 62 departures for a total of 124 flights) there were only 18,352 seats for sale. Yet AUS is showing Viva Aerobus carried 22,040 passengers in May's activity report. How is that even possible?

I'm starting to wonder if we really did set an all-time record in May.

Also, The Statesman screwed up again this month. They reported jetBlue passengers as 39,913 in the story I posted. Airport shows 37,913.

I'm starting to wonder if anyone takes pride in their work anymore.

[misterno]

Can someone care to elaborate how Vivaaerobus manage to increase traffic while every other major airlines is losing passengers except Southwest?

[sammyk]

Originally Posted by misterno

Can someone care to elaborate how Vivaaerobus manage to increase traffic while every other major airlines is losing passengers except Southwest?

Could be because they've just started and are ramping up to what their normal operations will be.

[hookem]

Hey all,

I flew JetBlue out of ABIA to Florida over the holiday, along their new FLL-AUS-SFO route. I've always had good experiences with JetBlue, and they were great this trip, just as expected.

The good news is the passenger load both ways was pretty full. On 7/3, a pretty busy travel day, the 100-seat E190 had maybe 2 seats open. On the way back, 7/5 (slower day) there were probably 6 seats open.

I didn't really note how many passengers were from SFO when I took the AUS-FLL route... but on the way back, I noticed there were many who were going all the way to SFO. In fact, the gate at FLL didn't even say Austin, it just said San Francisco... I'd estimate 40-50% at least of the plane was going on to SFO.

The disappointing thing was, when we got to Austin lots of the people going on to SFO wanted to get off the plane for food/drink/bathroom. The people in front of us asked the flight attendant how long they had before the flight started boarding again -- they were told they had 10 minutes. So, as I'm walking toward escalators to leave the airport, I'm seeing these connecting passengers running up to the bars & restaurants, only to find them CLOSED or CLOSING at 6pm! On a Saturday! They were frantically trying to find something open, and I'm not sure if they did. The retail was closed too. Need a tylenol? Want a book to read? Sorry, you'll have to wait 3 more hours til you are in SFO. It was disgusting, to think these people's only exposure to Austin was that they couldn't buy a beer or sandwich at 6pm at our airport.

For shame, ABIA. Not ready for little hub status, IMO... probably will get some complaints from the JetBlue passengers... heck, after what I saw, I wouldn't want to connect here.

[Mikey711MN]

Originally Posted by texastarkus

once Express Jet goes bye-bye

Rumors are flying--no pun intended--that ExpressJet branded operations will cease on 9/2.

Farewell to the following non-stop service, if true:
AUS-ONT
AUS-ABQ
AUS-TUS
AUS-MSY
AUS-JAX

Of all of those, I'd say that only perhaps AUS-MSY (New Orleans) has a snowball's chance in Austin of ever going nonstop in the future.

[texboy]

May I ask where that info is coming from?