^not that I disagree with anything he said, the title is very misleading.

interesting article blaming City leaders for keeping Burke Lakefront open even as number of flights at Hopkins dropped by 50%.  Standard line for keeping Burke open has always been they needed it to keep the capacity open at Hopkins.  Guess that's not true anymore.

 

http://beltmag.com/clevelandairporttroubles/

 

Although it's not within the city's purview -- it's the FAA keeping Burke open.  Burke keeps recreational flyers and slower planes out of Hopkins, as well as providing for overflow/emergency.

I think the last paragraph of the article sums up Cleveland government so well:

 

"A lot of jokes and cynicism ran through my head. But then I thought what Mayor Frank Jackson might tell me. He would probably shrug his shoulders and tell me at least the clock is right twice a day. And his staff and city council would probably tell him there is no need to fix the clock because it has always been that way."

interesting article blaming City leaders for keeping Burke Lakefront open even as number of flights at Hopkins dropped by 50%.  Standard line for keeping Burke open has always been they needed it to keep the capacity open at Hopkins.  Guess that's not true anymore.

 

http://beltmag.com/clevelandairporttroubles/

 

Although it's not within the city's purview -- it's the FAA keeping Burke open.  Burke keeps recreational flyers and slower planes out of Hopkins, as well as providing for overflow/emergency.

The article pretty clearly dissects that.

BKL is open and will remain open because closing it removes two runways from the local inventory.  New runways are ridiculously difficult to get approved and built (thik "NIMBY's).  Look at the time and hurdles that had to be cleared to build the new 24R/5L at CLe ten or so years ago.

 

The FAA does not like to reduce runway capacity.  Besides, just because UAL eliminated 100 flights today does not mean that ten years from now it all comes back with a vengence, especially if the local economy fires up. 

interesting article blaming City leaders for keeping Burke Lakefront open even as number of flights at Hopkins dropped by 50%.  Standard line for keeping Burke open has always been they needed it to keep the capacity open at Hopkins.  Guess that's not true anymore.

 

http://beltmag.com/clevelandairporttroubles/

 

Although it's not within the city's purview -- it's the FAA keeping Burke open.  Burke keeps recreational flyers and slower planes out of Hopkins, as well as providing for overflow/emergency.

 

still have capacity at the county airport for recreational flyers & slower planes

interesting article blaming City leaders for keeping Burke Lakefront open even as number of flights at Hopkins dropped by 50%.  Standard line for keeping Burke open has always been they needed it to keep the capacity open at Hopkins.  Guess that's not true anymore.

 

http://beltmag.com/clevelandairporttroubles/

 

Although it's not within the city's purview -- it's the FAA keeping Burke open.  Burke keeps recreational flyers and slower planes out of Hopkins, as well as providing for overflow/emergency.

 

still have capacity at the county airport for recreational flyers & slower planes

 

Ask the NIMBYS in Willoughby Hills and Richmond Heights if they would go for those operations.....

 

interesting article blaming City leaders for keeping Burke Lakefront open even as number of flights at Hopkins dropped by 50%.  Standard line for keeping Burke open has always been they needed it to keep the capacity open at Hopkins.  Guess that's not true anymore.

 

http://beltmag.com/clevelandairporttroubles/

 

Although it's not within the city's purview -- it's the FAA keeping Burke open.  Burke keeps recreational flyers and slower planes out of Hopkins, as well as providing for overflow/emergency.

 

still have capacity at the county airport for recreational flyers & slower planes

 

Ask the NIMBYS in Willoughby Hills and Richmond Heights if they would go for those operations.....

 

Pretty sure most of the NIMBYs were upset about lengthening runways to take larger planes. I don't think they'd protest more small planes.

 

Not to mention, if County picked up flights from BKL, some of its flights might move out Lost Nation or whatever airport is out in Lorain County.

interesting article blaming City leaders for keeping Burke Lakefront open even as number of flights at Hopkins dropped by 50%.  Standard line for keeping Burke open has always been they needed it to keep the capacity open at Hopkins.  Guess that's not true anymore.

 

http://beltmag.com/clevelandairporttroubles/

 

Although it's not within the city's purview -- it's the FAA keeping Burke open.  Burke keeps recreational flyers and slower planes out of Hopkins, as well as providing for overflow/emergency.

 

still have capacity at the county airport for recreational flyers & slower planes

 

Ask the NIMBYS in Willoughby Hills and Richmond Heights if they would go for those operations.....

 

Pretty sure most of the NIMBYs were upset about lengthening runways to take larger planes. I don't think they'd protest more small planes.

 

I wouldn't take that bet.  If they found out BKL was closing, they'd be out in force.

BKL is open and will remain open because closing it removes two runways from the local inventory.  New runways are ridiculously difficult to get approved and built (thik "NIMBY's).  Look at the time and hurdles that had to be cleared to build the new 24R/5L at CLe ten or so years ago.

 

The FAA does not like to reduce runway capacity.  Besides, just because UAL eliminated 100 flights today does not mean that ten years from now it all comes back with a vengence, especially if the local economy fires up. 

 

You misled a lot of people here with your "I'm an industry insider, I know better than all of you!" stuff, so you should probably go ahead and eat some humble pie and not make any more predictions for a while.

McGraw is going to be on the Triv Show talking about his article this afternoon. Didn't get the time though

Well i did eat some humble pie upthread...I didn't see this coming.  But on the other hand I didn't mislead anyone.

 

But, when it comes to BKL, it's going to be very difficult to close it for the reasons i gave above. 

 

It sounds like it's basically an oligopoly now. All these mergers hurt smaller airports and their respective cities, and yes, it's ridiculous to have these former hubs struggling with all that wasted space. We need more airlines. This hurts business travelers the most since you really want those direct flights to as many places as possible within your territory. It sounds like CLE was a much better airport when it was a Continental hub.

 

I'm amazed Virgin America made it to profitability being hubbed at SFO. United and American were really stiff competition and went directly after those Virgin flights. Ditto with Southwest at OAK.

 

As folks in Cincy have discovered, the fares haven't come down as hoped. It really takes new low cost carriers to come into the market to bring down fares.

 

Agreed.

 

I disagree we need more airlines. More airlines means lower fares and less profitability. For the first time in years, the industry is profitable thanks to consolidation. Serving the smaller cities is never profitable even with all the subsidies the airline industry gets. Consider this opinionated article from 2012:

 

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_2012/features/terminal_sickness035756.php?page=all

 

Fair point. We need more high-speed rail!

 

And that article brings up an important point from a global business perspective with Chiquita moving to Charlotte. No doubt having a major hub airport is a huge advantage for landing corporate HQ's.

Fair point. We need more high-speed rail!

 

I was taking a snapshot of the airline industry rather than note HSR. However, this blog does note it:

 

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,1414.msg695759.html#msg695759

McGraw is going to be on the Triv Show talking about his article this afternoon. Didn't get the time though

 

It was around 5, maybe a little earlier, in case the show is archived.

How's this?

 

 

United uploaded its new post-hub schedule. Here's what it looks like the first Monday post-hub:

 

Albany 2x

Baltimore 2x

Boston 4x

Chicago 13x (5 mainline)

Dallas 2x

Denver 4x (2 mainline)

Houston 5x (4 mainline)

Ft. Lauderdale 1x

Ft. Myers 1x

LA 3x (3 mainline)

Las Vegas 1x (1 mainline)

Milwaukee 3x

Newark 5x (4 mainline)

New York-LaGuardia 8x

Orlando 2x (2 mainline)

San Francisco 2x (2 mainline)

St. Louis 2x

Tampa 1x

Washington-Dulles 5x

Washington-Reagan 5x

So 23x mainline that Monday... including several more to ORD than normal, I think. If more of the RJ flights were on E170 family that would be great

Delta has added 3x daily to LGA effectively cancelling AA's reduction.

 

My prediction, based on stats of O&D and average yields from other market,s is that somebody may add CLE - RDU and CLE - BDL.  Just a hunch.

 

PHX could be a distinct possibility.  With UAL keeping 5x daily N/S to the west coast, I don't know about PDX or SEA.  Seems that unless the yields are really good, they would be satisfied with letting pax connect in LAX or SFO.

Is that the schedule that starts in April or in June when all cuts will be fully implemented?

Is that the schedule that starts in April or in June when all cuts will be fully implemented?

 

It's the schedule in June once the cuts are complete.

 

 

United uploaded its new post-hub schedule. Here's what it looks like the first Monday post-hub:

 

Albany 2x

Baltimore 2x

Boston 4x

Chicago 13x (5 mainline)

Dallas 2x

Denver 4x (2 mainline)

Houston 5x (4 mainline)

Ft. Lauderdale 1x

Ft. Myers 1x

LA 3x (3 mainline)

Las Vegas 1x (1 mainline)

Milwaukee 3x

Newark 5x (4 mainline)

New York-LaGuardia 8x

Orlando 2x (2 mainline)

San Francisco 2x (2 mainline)

St. Louis 2x

Tampa 1x

Washington-Dulles 5x

Washington-Reagan 5x

 

That is definitely more mainline to Chicago.  It was sitting somewhere between 0 and 2 a day last month.

That is definitely more mainline to Chicago.  It was sitting somewhere between 0 and 2 a day last month.

 

That gives credence to MD88's estimates on O&D at CLE.  All those people are getting shuffled to the regional flights at ORD.  At least O'Hare rare has weather or backup issues.  :roll:  And there's nothing like being #37 in line for departure....

^ Yes, and there was an article in an Erie Pa publication stating that United is shifting Erie's connecting flights from Hopkins to O'hare.  There will be two daily ERJ flights to ORD.  I imagine many other former CLE feeder cities will see that shifts or capacity increases to other UA hubs.

 

Another article said that dropping CLE as a hub will help UA with its financial and debt positions.

 

One confusion I have, after assimilating the overdose of Executive Speak we were subjected to by both local officials and United executives, is Cleveland's origin - destination traffic relative to CVG, PIT, STL, etc.  CLE is touted as having much higher OD percentages, however, the hubs at those cities were much, much larger than anything CLE ever had, such that an equal number of OD passengers at those other cities would yield a much lower OD percentage.  As this is an alleged condition that would make CLE more attractive to other carriers than the other cities mentioned, I am wondering, what is the "reality" of the situation?

The fact that STL is at least 4 hours from the next largest city/airport makes it a regional O&D draw (I used to live 3 hours away and STL was the "big city" to us..). CVG, PIT, CLE all have 1 or more major cities/airports within 2 or so hours... so I'm guessing they don't have the same draw as a city like STL (which had 12MM passengers in most recent year available...)

 

I also still haven't seen any reliable #s that show the connecting-only passenger load at CLE on the 100 or so flights being lost. The loss of these customers will have the most impact on the concessions at CLE - but if that load was only 1MM passengers, for instance, then the passenger #s shouldn't be down terribly if O&D travelers are still flying from CLE to those now-cancelled destinations - as well as all remaining flights.

^I can't remember which article I saw it in (it might have been at the press release,) but I think I remember Ricky Smith saying that CLE would lose only about 8 or 9% of its passenger traffic because of the cuts, despite the large percentage of flights being cut.  I'm not sure if that's counting only connecting traffic, or O&D between CLE and places like Erie and Kalamazoo, too.

^I can't remember which article I saw it in (it might have been at the press release,) but I think I remember Ricky Smith saying that CLE would lose only about 8 or 9% of its passenger traffic because of the cuts, despite the large percentage of flights being cut.  I'm not sure if that's counting only connecting traffic, or O&D between CLE and places like Erie and Kalamazoo, too.

 

Yes, that sounds about right.  UAL did not connect many people thru CLE.  That's one reason that I think that contributed to the closure.  Some of the connections thru CLE required long connecting times between flight making it undesireable from a pax standpoint.  I was always looking for frequency increases and they never came.  UAL was right to say that enough people weren't connecting thru CLE to make the hub viable, but at the same time I don't think UAL attempted to increase those numbers with good connections.  A hub is expensive so you try to push as many flights as possible in order to maximized your investment.  It's a huge fixed cost.  The costs are similar whether you have 200 flts or 500.  Two hundred  flights per day just din't create the economy of scale needed. 

No one has brought up the most important problem that could come out of this:  Starbucks just came back to CLE.  Let's hope they don't have a "ripcord clause" in their lease that lets them pull out in this situation!

All I was getting at was:

  The airport management said that CLE had a better shot at getting other airlines to replace some lost service from the de-hubbing, than other de-hubbed mid-size cities, because CLE has better OD numbers, but the numbers were expressed as percents.  What I am asking is since PIT, CVG, and STL had much larger connecting hubs, they could all have identical OD volumes, and Cleveland's percent OD would be higher, because it had relatively few connecting passengers.  BOTTOM LINE does Ricky Smith's statement have any merit?

 

 

All I was getting at was:

  The airport management said that CLE had a better shot at getting other airlines to replace some lost service from the de-hubbing, than other de-hubbed mid-size cities, because CLE has better OD numbers, but the numbers were expressed as percents.  What I am asking is since PIT, CVG, and STL had much larger connecting hubs, they could all have identical OD volumes, and Cleveland's percent OD would be lower, because it had relatively few connecting passengers.  BOTTOM LINE does Ricky Smith's statement have any merit?

 

 

 

I also would like to see what the raw total of passengers for CLE would be if you remove the people connecting.

 

But in terms of O&D, there's something that makes the CLE hub closure unique compared to PIT, CVG, STL, and MEM ... our region essentially has two airports, CLE and CAK. And of course, CAK, has a huge low cost carrier presence. That grew out of CLE's hub and resulting one airline domination and high fares.

 

CAK last year served about 1.7 million passengers, compared to CLE's 9 million. For many folks in northeast Ohio the difference in drive time to CAK versus CLE is nominal. The halfway point in terms of drive time lies roughly from between Richfield and Bath and then over to Hudson. So for many folks the choice of where to fly from is based solely on ticket cost. It should also be noted that CAK grew roughly a million passengers since 2000. These passengers didn't come out of thin air. What airports were they flying out of before? I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of those were previously flying from CLE. What would bring them back? A low cost carrier.

 

I think this is why CLE stands in a good position to regain some flights back from a low cost carrier coming in. The O&D is good here as a % and when you factor in how many folks in Cuyahoga and Lake County are driving all the way down to CAK to catch a flight, they are POTENTIALLY even better.

 

It really boils down to what Southwest will do in CAK once they fully integrate AirTran into their system by the end of the year. The airlines can easily map the addresses of their passengers and see how many actually live closer to CLE when trying to figure out what flights to move around (and how many could potentially stop driving to CAK if a different low cost carrier moved in to CLE with a similar flight).

 

What percentage of CAK's 1.7 million passengers would refuse to fly out of CLE if the airfares at CLE were cheaper? That's the huge question. Does it make sense for Southwest to run two operations at two airports in northeast Ohio, essentially servicing 2 airports with overlapping population catch areas?

 

I can't think of any Combined Statistical Area smaller than Cleveland-Akron-Canton that has two major airports (serving over a million passengers) that isn't a tourist mecca. Does this region really need a large operation at CAK and at CLE when passengers are pretty much willing to pick either airport? With airlines trying to save cash anywhere they can, it seems inevitable that airlines would consolidate their operations at just one airport in northeast Ohio. That's not to say CAK goes away (it could end up looking a lot similar to today's Toledo Airport). But it seems much more logical for Southwest to operate at one airport, Frontier at one airport and if JetBlue, Spirit, or Allegient ever come in, at just one airport. But which airport will they choose?

 

 

 

 

 

 

You're forgetting Dayton International. It's one of the few airports in the Midwest-Northeast region that has seen a rise in enplanements since 2000, up 7%. The reason is offers lower fares than Cincinnati and is only 60-some miles away from Cincinnati's Fountain Square.

 

And CAK has also drawn some traffic away from PIT too. It's a big reason why CAK is up more than 100% since 2000.

 

But I get your point about attracting more low-cost carrier flights. Here's a question -- how much gate and ticket counter space does United have locked up via leases at CLE? And for how long? The reason I ask is that Delta had a large number of gates leased at CVG for an extended period of time and was willing to pay to keep them vacant yet leased. In exchange, Delta could keep competition out of CVG and charge higher fares. Hence a big reason why travelers are willing to drive up to Dayton to catch their flights. So what is UAL's or the typical lease arrangement at CLE? Does the airline with the lease get the right of first refusal to renew the lease and thus keep competitors locked out?

interesting article blaming City leaders for keeping Burke Lakefront open even as number of flights at Hopkins dropped by 50%.  Standard line for keeping Burke open has always been they needed it to keep the capacity open at Hopkins.  Guess that's not true anymore.

 

http://beltmag.com/clevelandairporttroubles/

 

Thought provoking. Wow - 450 acres. I never did fully realize just how much space that was until reading this article.

 

The Burke property could fit three 18-hole golf course on it. Six Crocker Parks. One Cedar Point with about 90 acres left over.

I think if you are not a top 10 market you can forget about gaining any hubs in the near future. Honestly I think most cities that lost their hubs just need direct and a few international flights. Why is that so hard to get? It does not have to fly international everyday.

interesting article blaming City leaders for keeping Burke Lakefront open even as number of flights at Hopkins dropped by 50%.  Standard line for keeping Burke open has always been they needed it to keep the capacity open at Hopkins.  Guess that's not true anymore.

 

http://beltmag.com/clevelandairporttroubles/

 

Thought provoking. Wow - 450 acres. I never did fully realize just how much space that was until reading this article.

 

The Burke property could fit three 18-hole golf course on it. Six Crocker Parks. One Cedar Point with about 90 acres left over.

 

And do what with it?  It's taken us 10 years to get the first building put up on the Flats East bank site, and we're just now starting Phase II.  Sure 450 lakefront acres would be great, but closing BKL would not instantly make a Toronto waterfront laden with skyscrapers.

 

I personally like driving by BKL on a game day etc and seeing 15-20 bizjets, or maybe even the occasional B737 parked at Millionair.  I think the city should use this resource more to attract jobs and employers here--for the convenience of a downtown airport.

UAL will still have between 70 and 80 flts per day.  They will still to some degree be able to set fares and others will follow in competitive markets.  Everyone clamors for southwest, but their fares usually match the competition.  Also, on Southwest, they don't interline with anyone.  If they cancel a flight, they cannot transfer you to another airline.

 

If you want to see CLE's near term future, look to RDU.  Similar O&D.  AA and DAL offer about 100 flts per day between them.  Throw in USAir, JetBlue and Southwest plus the daily AA flt to LHR.

 

Also CLE could look to RDU for an example on how to construct a great terminal/gate space. 

interesting article blaming City leaders for keeping Burke Lakefront open even as number of flights at Hopkins dropped by 50%.  Standard line for keeping Burke open has always been they needed it to keep the capacity open at Hopkins.  Guess that's not true anymore.

 

http://beltmag.com/clevelandairporttroubles/

 

Thought provoking. Wow - 450 acres. I never did fully realize just how much space that was until reading this article.

 

The Burke property could fit three 18-hole golf course on it. Six Crocker Parks. One Cedar Point with about 90 acres left over.

 

And do what with it? 

 

 

That's precisely my point. What can we do with it? What's feasible under what timeline? You don't know. I don't know.

 

I think the airport is really cool, but the author is correct in that it's time to really look at whether the airport is the best use of the space.

^Could the city trade the Burke land to the port for their land? The port's land is much more valuable to development since it is better connected to downtown and is at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. How long would it take for the Port to move? I don't know much about the Port, but it appears to be just a completely paved surface with a few warehouses on it. Doesn't seem like a massive project. If possible that would be my dream for the space.

 

The port land (not portland) even has space for a transit stop! Another plus over Burke.

 

Edit: Would it be possible to consolidate both the port and burke to the burke land? There appears to be a lot of land not being used by the airport which could be perfect for the port and would allow for you to keep the airport as well.

interesting article blaming City leaders for keeping Burke Lakefront open even as number of flights at Hopkins dropped by 50%.  Standard line for keeping Burke open has always been they needed it to keep the capacity open at Hopkins.  Guess that's not true anymore.

 

http://beltmag.com/clevelandairporttroubles/

 

Thought provoking. Wow - 450 acres. I never did fully realize just how much space that was until reading this article.

 

The Burke property could fit three 18-hole golf course on it. Six Crocker Parks. One Cedar Point with about 90 acres left over.

 

And do what with it? 

 

 

That's precisely my point. What can we do with it? What's feasible under what timeline? You don't know. I don't know.

 

I think the airport is really cool, but the author is correct in that it's time to really look at whether the airport is the best use of the space.

 

Is it really time to look at that? I see people say this all the time, but the city hasn't even developed the waterfront space it has, let alone adding that much space for redevelopment right now. Honestly, maybe the right time to look at that would be...10 years? Really.

 

No, in a vaccum I don't think Burke is is the greatest use of space, but it does have SOME benefits...and I find the general suggestion I've been seeing that Burke somehow added to hub troubles a little silly. Right when that merger went through, CLE became redundant...it was inevitable.

A Cleveland Airport-related story out of Youngstown.......

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,7219.msg696292.html#msg696292

^I can't remember which article I saw it in (it might have been at the press release,) but I think I remember Ricky Smith saying that CLE would lose only about 8 or 9% of its passenger traffic because of the cuts, despite the large percentage of flights being cut.  I'm not sure if that's counting only connecting traffic, or O&D between CLE and places like Erie and Kalamazoo, too.

 

Yes, that sounds about right.  UAL did not connect many people thru CLE.  That's one reason that I think that contributed to the closure.  Some of the connections thru CLE required long connecting times between flight making it undesireable from a pax standpoint.  I was always looking for frequency increases and they never came.  UAL was right to say that enough people weren't connecting thru CLE to make the hub viable, but at the same time I don't think UAL attempted to increase those numbers with good connections.  A hub is expensive so you try to push as many flights as possible in order to maximized your investment.  It's a huge fixed cost.  The costs are similar whether you have 200 flts or 500.  Two hundred  flights per day just din't create the economy of scale needed. 

 

Here's what I don't understand.  When UAL cliams "there wasn't the demand to connect throught CLE" doesn't UAL control all of that?  If the flight schedule you create provides a higher cost, long connection time at CLE vs a lower cost, shorter connection time at ORD, of course people will choose to connect through ORD.  But ORD is a disaster.  I doubt people would choose to connect through ORD vs. pretty much anywhere all things being equal.

 

I just connected through ORD on UAL and it screamed to me why UAL should have been routing more traffic through CLE.  Air traffic volume was so high our landing was delayed, connecting gates were extremely far apart (terminal B to F), and I basically had to jog through the terminals to make my connection.

 

At CLE, you're not going to have the air traffic volume concerns, connecting gates should be closer (even C to D is closer that what I did B to F at ORD), and it's generally less crowded.  From a passenger perspective, less mobs to deal with, better on-time performance, easier travel between connecting gates, more likely to be able to grab something quick from a vendor...this is all better.

 

I won't ever have visibility to their financials, but from a customer service standpoint I would think using CLE to offset tremendous ORD traffic would work...and even some traffic from EWR.  I think given a fair choice, people would prefer to avoid those places if possible.

I am with you in thinking there is no reason why CLE shouldn't have been an acceptable connecting option for most passengers  had UAL served it up as readily as it does for ORD and EWR and to lesser degrees DEN, IAD and IAH (at least on routes I frequent). But they, in my opinion, chose not to offer consumers the CLE connecting option as visibly, or at a competitive cost, asthey could have .

 

While hub still around, try some connecting options like I did this week (and previously have) and see which airport you will almost never get connecting options through on a sample trip from a soon to be gone connecting city to another CLE destination.

You both are correct when thinking in terms of passenger satisfaction, something United and other airlines ultimately do not care about.

 

As a CFO of an airline I'm sure they're looking at economies of scale.  Having all regional flights out of one hub cuts down on staffing, especially on the support side.  In addition the volume lets them negotiate better costs on jet fuel, de-icing, etc.

 

I'm with you 100% that CLE is better for customers....but I'm not running an airline.  In the end we can all vote with our credit cards and not fly United.  But as with most things in America, cheaper is always better--and most of the flying public will opt for a $hitty experience in ORD at a lower fare than a more expensive and (pleasurable) day in Cleveland.

Alaska Airlines continues to ads more cities... Including just announced DTW this Fall... And MSY and TPA.  Maybe they will add CLE service... Wouldnt rule it out... Already fly STL-SEA, etc. 

This might be the most hilariously underwhelming "glimmer of good news" since the de-hubbing:

 

Frontier Airlines announced that it is launching twice-weekly nonstop service to Trenton, N.J., beginning with a departure from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport at 2 p.m. Thursday.

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/02/hopkins_official_says_silver_l.html#incart_river_default#incart_m-rpt-2

 

But hopefully there will be many more announcements like this in the coming months...

"@FlyFrontier: Good news keeps coming! Today we are adding 3 new routes: Trenton-Cleveland on 2/13, Trenton-Indy on 4/29, & Trenton-Nashville on 4/30"

 

This might be the most hilariously underwhelming "glimmer of good news" since the de-hubbing:

 

Frontier Airlines announced that it is launching twice-weekly nonstop service to Trenton, N.J., beginning with a departure from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport at 2 p.m. Thursday.

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/02/hopkins_official_says_silver_l.html#incart_river_default#incart_m-rpt-2

 

But hopefully there will be many more announcements like this in the coming months...

 

What an oddly worded article. This announcement was made MONTHS ago and tickets have been on sale since November. It's worded as if the de-hubbing prompted this service to begin now, when in fact this was planned long before any knowledge of hub closure.

 

Fares for these flights last week were actually priced at $46 round trip for ANY flight through May. That "sale" price has gone up this week. But getting a nonstop flight for that price is almost unheard of these days.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if this flight actually prompted United to pull their CLE-Philadelphia flights soon. The Philadelphia market is one of CLE's top destinations with almost 150,000 flyers per year. With United cutting this service, someone has to pick up the slack. It's almost as if United just handed over the passengers to Frontier on this one as they can't compete with those fares. I wish Frontier much success with this route so that they add a few more destinations this year.

 

Has anyone else read the ill-timed Hemispheres magazine piece on Cleveland and noticed there appears to be little or no reference to CLE's United hub in the 50+ page section.... ad, article, chart or otherwise. Being a paid piece in an airline mag, and given the slant of this section, you would have thought it would have come up as a selling point for the region. That omission seems like more than coincidence, even though it was surely written/printed weeks or months ago.  It begs the question "who knew what, when???"

interesting article blaming City leaders for keeping Burke Lakefront open even as number of flights at Hopkins dropped by 50%.  Standard line for keeping Burke open has always been they needed it to keep the capacity open at Hopkins.  Guess that's not true anymore.

 

http://beltmag.com/clevelandairporttroubles/

 

Thought provoking. Wow - 450 acres. I never did fully realize just how much space that was until reading this article.

 

The Burke property could fit three 18-hole golf course on it. Six Crocker Parks. One Cedar Point with about 90 acres left over.

 

And do what with it? 

 

 

That's precisely my point. What can we do with it? What's feasible under what timeline? You don't know. I don't know.

 

I think the airport is really cool, but the author is correct in that it's time to really look at whether the airport is the best use of the space.

 

Is it really time to look at that? I see people say this all the time, but the city hasn't even developed the waterfront space it has, let alone adding that much space for redevelopment right now. Honestly, maybe the right time to look at that would be...10 years? Really.

 

Why wait? I found the article fairly persuasive. The author states there has yet to be a study conducted regarding the necessity of Burke, which you must admit is kind of shocking. With CLE trending down it seems to me that it is time to at least get a better grasp on what's up.

Well that didn't take long!

 

Frontier just announced that they'll be starting non stop Cleveland-Seattle service this summer as well as non stop Cleveland-Orlando service.

 

Hopefully the first of many new low cost carriers expanding in Cleveland!

Well that didn't take long!

 

Frontier just announced that they'll be starting non stop Cleveland-Seattle service this summer as well as non stop Cleveland-Orlando service.

 

Hopefully the first of many new low cost carriers expanding in Cleveland!

 

The Orlando flight will be year round, 4x per week. The Seattle flight is seasonal, 3x per week.

 

They also announced that they are increasing service to Denver from 5x per week to 12x.

 

I expect we'll be hearing a similar announcement from Southwest before too long. And it's a pretty safe bet the legacy carriers will be bulking up their schedules as well, with bigger planes, greater frequencies, and hopefully a new destination or two (AA/US to Phoenix?).