Agreed on the discussions.
More realistically, San Marcos or New Braunfels could just start commercial service by serving regional routes to Houston and Dallas, much like Waco's airport has service to DFW (only flights are to DFW via American Eagle/Envoy). They wouldn't offer a lot of options/nonstops outside of Texas, but at least they would only have to make one stop to go to most places in the US, and beyond if need be. It's unlikely this would happen though, unless city leaders decide to make this a plan B to their "regional airport" idea.
@GoldenBoot: true, this is the ABIA thread, but the idea is a bit relevant to AUS, in which it brings up the possibility of an alternative to AUS and SAT, and not of some random airport way out in the middle of Kansas
![Tongue](images/smilies/tongue.gif)
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Aside from that...
So it's confirmed we will now have a 787-9 and a 767 flying a transatlantic into Austin this summer. Some say other transAt's could happen, but could Austin fill a third plane to Europe? I can't say it's unlikely since Austin has surprised us many times in recent years, especially with BA190/191, and then the Condor flight. Plus passenger traffic was incredible this summer.
Although would another airline like... KLM decide to serve a "secondary airport" alrport like Austin when there's already one daily transatlantic flying in, or would they prefer to fly into another similar airport like St Louis to "monopolize" on the transatlantic route? I say St Louis since I know they're trying to add a European flight (London, I think), plus their passenger numbers were 12 million last year.