Adding to airport officials’ cautiously opti-
mistic outlook is that the number of passengers is up about three times more than the seat capacity which means the airlines are filling more seats.
|
|
There were 38 percent more available seats to Denver with United now operating five flights a day, Frontier two and Southwest entering the market last year with one flight a day. On average, there were 549 seats per day available to Denver.
Although Dallas-Fort Worth still has the most capacity, at 960 seats per day on average, the number was down nearly 13 percent from a year ago.
Sky Harbor down 5.2%
Final 2009 statistics from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport show passenger totals there were down 5.2 percent from 2008. Sky Harbor had 37.8 million passengers last year, a drop of just over 2 million. On the plus side, the number of international travelers was up 1 percent putting it about 130,000 shy of 2 million people using Sky Harbor to fly out of the country.
For the second consecutive year, Sky Harbor dropped a notch in the Federal Aviation Administration’s rankings of busiest airports. For 2009 it ranked No. 10, down from No. 9 in 2008 and No. 8 in 2007. The FAA ranks airports by the number of takeoffs and landings — operations, as they’re called. For 2009, Sky Harbor had 457,207 operations. (By way of comparison, Tucson International Airport had 34,744 airline operations in 2009.)
The FAA’s 10 busiest airports in 2009 (with 2008 ranking in parenthesis) were:
1. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta (1)
2. Chicago O’Hare (2)
3. Dallas-Fort Worth (3)
4. Denver International (4)
5. Los Angeles International (5)
6. George Bush Houston Intercontinental (7)
7. Las Vegas McCarran (6)
8. Charlotte Douglas (8)
9. Philadelphia International (10)
10. Sky Harbor (9)
Airport satisfaction
J.D. Powers surveyed more than 12,100 people who traveled in 2009 about their levels of satisfaction of airports and Tucson International ranked No. 3 with 755 points on a 1,000-point scale — behind category winner Indianapolis (777 points) and Southwest Florida in Fort Myers (767 points) — among airports with fewer than 10 million passengers per year.
Tucson’s airport scored best in a category called “accessibility” in which passengers were asked to describe the overall ease of getting in and getting out of the airport and its attractiveness. It ranked better than average in the other five categories: check-in process, security issues, user-friendly terminal, baggage claim, and food and retail options.
Among the largest domestic airports with 30 million or more passengers per year, Phoenix Sky Harbor ranked as well or better than Tucson in all categories except food and retail choices were considered just average. Sky Harbor’s overall score was 699. The highest-ranked big airport was Detroit’s Metropolitan and the top-ranked medium airport was Kansas City International.
Frontier changes
Frontier Airlines, under new owner Republic Airways, is continuing to make changes. It’s adding seven new cities from Denver starting this summer — five of which will be available for connections from Tucson: Branson, Mo.; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Green Bay, Wis.; Madison, Wis.; and Newport News, Va. The other two cities being added to Frontier’s network from Denver are Long Beach and Santa Barbara, Calif.
Also, Frontier is shutting down its subsidiary named Lynx and getting rid of its Bombardier Q400 propeller planes. The phase-out will begin in April and be done by September. Fargo, N.D., and Tulsa, Okla., will lose Frontier service as of April 6 but all other cities will be switched to regional jets.
Finally, to bring more Colorado Rockies fans to their team’s final Spring Training season in Tucson, Frontier is adding a third daily round-trip between Tucson and Denver from March 2 through April 18. Unlike the other two daily flights on full-size Airbus aircraft, this one will use a regional jet.
Airfares are down
Domestic airfares were down last year at all but one of the nation’s top 100 airports but Tucson’s average didn’t go down as much as most others, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The latest data, as of Sept. 30, shows the average fare from Tucson was down 10.9 percent in 2009 from 2008. The average from Sky Harbor was down 13.2 percent. The national average decline was 14.4 percent.
Analysts generally don’t compare the actual price average from market-to-market because of the variables in types of service. The calculations are based on the amount of money paid at the time of ticketing so in most cases they don’t include the new baggage fees.
The one city where the average airfare was up was Savannah, Ga., where they increased 2.5 percent.
No tax on bag fee
The Internal Revenue Service has determined the money airlines are collecting from bag fees is not subject to an excise tax. The determination was made in response to a request from American Airlines.
For airlines that means they’ll be able to keep all of the estimated $2 billion they could take in this year but it also could discourage an airline such as Southwest, which has tried to make a big deal out of the fact that it doesn’t charge baggage fees. A Southwest spokeswoman said the airline continues to stand by its no-baggage fee decision.
Most other domestic airlines charge $25 for the first checked bag and $25 to $55 for each additional piece. Heavy luggage can cost up to $125 per bag.
US Airways at ‘risk’
Tempe-based US Airways has made it on to a Forbes list — but not a good one. It’s among the top 10 companies for financial risk. The list was compiled from research by Los Angeles-based Audit Integrity, which reviewed 2,700 companies, all public nonfinancial firms with market values of at least $100 million and assets of at least $150 million. It assessed bankruptcy risk using accounting indicators including liquidity, leverage and accounting governance risk metrics as well as market measures such as stock volatility.
US Airways ranked sixth on the list and did not respond to the magazine’s request for a comment. Audit Integrity says its model would have classified 81 percent of the public companies that went bankrupt last year as the top 10 percent riskiest.
Perfect Flight Line
You can find little nuggets in some annual reports. For instance, the Tucson Airport Authority’s review of 2009 included a note that Tucson International Airport’s Flight Line was commended by Southwest Airlines for its on-time performance for January through June 2009 that resulted in not a single one of the airline’s 3,112 flights having any fueling delays. In fact, the Flight Line has had a perfect audit for eight consecutive years. There are 30 Flight Line employees.
Contact David Hatfield at dhatfield@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4237. Inside Business Travel appears the fourth week of each month.
Comments