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The problem is that as a discount carrier you have to sustain the load factors and revenue per seat mile numbers for all 365 days. The city pair isn't viable if flights are going out empty in the off season. You can sell a seat to LGW from any airport in the country in July/August.
The Iceland hub is a better model for regional airports though an Ireland hub with a TAP-like multi-day layover option in Lisbon or Porto would be easier to sell.
The problem is that as a discount carrier you have to sustain the load factors and revenue per seat mile numbers for all 365 days. The city pair isn't viable if flights are going out empty in the off season.
Exactly. American Legacy Carries like American/United/Delta and the European Carriers like British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France, etc. can be profitable even when they fill only 75% of their seats. Their premium cabins are the money maker on these transatlantic routes with seats often going for $10k or more each. 15 of those seats means more revenue than 200 economy tickets at $500 or so a piece. So airlines like Norwegian (with no premium cabin on their narrow body jets) need to consistently fill 90%+ of the seats in order to yield a narrow profit. The PVD, SWF and BDL routes were intended to be served with the 737 Max which is about 20% cheaper to operate than the standard 737. The 737 Max grounding combined with little wiggle room in the margins means that these routes are unsustainable.
If the 737 Max recovers (I think it will), or better yet, the A220 proves its mettle, Providence can sustain flights to Europe. But it will never happen with inefficient aircraft operating for an airline that's on the brink of financial ruin.
Exactly. American Legacy Carries like American/United/Delta and the European Carriers like British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France, etc. can be profitable even when they fill only 75% of their seats. Their premium cabins are the money maker on these transatlantic routes with seats often going for $10k or more each. 15 of those seats means more revenue than 200 economy tickets at $500 or so a piece. So airlines like Norwegian (with no premium cabin on their narrow body jets) need to consistently fill 90%+ of the seats in order to yield a narrow profit. The PVD, SWF and BDL routes were intended to be served with the 737 Max which is about 20% cheaper to operate than the standard 737. The 737 Max grounding combined with little wiggle room in the margins means that these routes are unsustainable.
If the 737 Max recovers (I think it will), or better yet, the A220 proves its mettle, Providence can sustain flights to Europe. But it will never happen with inefficient aircraft operating for an airline that's on the brink of financial ruin.
An A220 only has about a 3,700 mile range. With a jet stream headwind, Europe to Providence is challenging. Iceland would be no problem. Dublin, probably. Gatwick would be about as far as you could go.
An A220 only has about a 3,700 mile range. With a jet stream headwind, Europe to Providence is challenging. Iceland would be no problem. Dublin, probably. Gatwick would be about as far as you could go.
Airbus has a handy map on the website which allows you to see the aircraft's range. The A220 won't dive deep into Europe, but it appears that it could easily fly PVD - Dublin, London, Azores, Lisbon, Iceland etc. and back with some wiggle room. It may need to stop for fuel in more challenging headwinds (which isn't uncommon, even on transcontinental flights on A320s/737s here in the States), but generally it can do the routes to the cities that Norwegian is/was flying to. And frankly, apart from Iceland, those are likely to be the biggest PVD markets in Europe anyway.
But all this is speculation as I don't know of any airline even proposing transatlantic A220 flights. Airbus has flown it transatlantic (from London City Airport) to demonstrate the capability, but nobody's said they'll actually fly it. We'll see.
I heard that a study is going to be done concerning, why Green is losing a number of flights. The Govenors office I guess is conducting it.
Can't the politicians figure out for themselves the why. The 737 Max was the major player for Norwegian flights. Its not Greens fault what went wrong with that aircraft. Its not the airports fault Norwegian has no replacement aircraft to remain at Green. I will say every time I have walked by Norwegian gates at Green. There was no shortage of passengers waiting for the Europe flights. Especially the Dublin one.
It is also not Greens fault that Frontier wanted to start flights to some oddball destinations. Austin, New Orleans etc. Those were canx I can see why. Not enough of a market. Same with the Montreal flight, that didn't get off the ground at all.
I just don't see how the airport is held responsible for this particular mess. Especially the Norwegian disaster. If anyone should be held responsible its Boeing, Frontier and the Montreal carrier
I heard that a study is going to be done concerning, why Green is losing a number of flights. The Govenors office I guess is conducting it.
Can't the politicians figure out for themselves the why. The 737 Max was the major player for Norwegian flights. Its not Greens fault what went wrong with that aircraft. Its not the airports fault Norwegian has no replacement aircraft to remain at Green. I will say every time I have walked by Norwegian gates at Green. There was no shortage of passengers waiting for the Europe flights. Especially the Dublin one.
It is also not Greens fault that Frontier wanted to start flights to some oddball destinations. Austin, New Orleans etc. Those were canx I can see why. Not enough of a market. Same with the Montreal flight, that didn't get off the ground at all.
I just don't see how the airport is held responsible for this particular mess. Especially the Norwegian disaster. If anyone should be held responsible its Boeing, Frontier and the Montreal carrier
Who would blame the airport? Green seems to have the red carpet out to all takers. It's not the airport authority's job to determine which destinations will pay off for the airlines. What doesn't work, doesn't work. And, plenty of these "odd ball" destinations clearly don't work, regardless Boeing's issues.
Hartford has a lot of long haul flights. Three carriers serve DEN. DFW. Houston. LAX. At Providence, you can get to hubs and Florida. It’s too close to Logan where you can get multiple nonstops to lots of cities and there are a lot of competitive routes with good prices. I’d love to use PVD all the time but it either doesn’t have the nonstop or the flight is really expensive.
I am another one who thinks it is not Greens fault but just the consequences of the rapidly changing airline industry.
We visit RI quite a bit flying from Jacksonville Florida and when Southwest Airlines bought Value Jet (formally AirTran) those inexpensive tickets dried right up. Once Southwest got there gates in Boston and Atlanta deals to Green virtually disappeared. Also some of the other destinations we traveled to regularly with Southwest went up considerably when Southwest bought Value Jet.
We can still find deals but really have to stay on top for availability’s. On the other hand Jet Blue is offering non-stop from Jacksonville to Boston for $59-$99 one way.
Here at Jacksonville International Airport it is a mirror of Green where we keep rolling out the red carpet but it is a constant shuffle of airlines flights and destinations.
We have Allegiant and Frontier with some wonky destinations but they offer super cheap flights until you start adding baggage and other things.
Here we can drive south to Miami and get to Barcelona round trip for under $600 or fly out locally here in Jax for $1200-1400.
Southwest is dropping a lot of routes in January so it will be interesting to see how that affects our destinations.
I am another one who thinks it is not Greens fault but just the consequences of the rapidly changing airline industry.
We visit RI quite a bit flying from Jacksonville Florida and when Southwest Airlines bought Value Jet (formally AirTran) those inexpensive tickets dried right up. Once Southwest got there gates in Boston and Atlanta deals to Green virtually disappeared. Also some of the other destinations we traveled to regularly with Southwest went up considerably when Southwest bought Value Jet.
We can still find deals but really have to stay on top for availability’s. On the other hand Jet Blue is offering non-stop from Jacksonville to Boston for $59-$99 one way.
Here at Jacksonville International Airport it is a mirror of Green where we keep rolling out the red carpet but it is a constant shuffle of airlines flights and destinations.
We have Allegiant and Frontier with some wonky destinations but they offer super cheap flights until you start adding baggage and other things.
Here we can drive south to Miami and get to Barcelona round trip for under $600 or fly out locally here in Jax for $1200-1400.
Southwest is dropping a lot of routes in January so it will be interesting to see how that affects our destinations.
Agree. Green is doing everything seemingly possible to stimulate business. Fingers crossed that Southwest maintains their incredibly low fares from PVD to FLL this winter.
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