We actually flew Elite when Orange Air had to stop flying to CUN back in Nov. 2015. Service was adequate, and the plane was fairly well maintained. Of course, it would be nice to see them flying here again, but I don't see that on the horizon at this time.

Nola wrote:

If DL is dropping that much, they'll have to do something or continue to shrink in the market.

Unfortunately, this is the most likely of such chosen pathways.

msyflyer wrote:

DL does not operate any overseas flights outside of their hubs, that I can recall.

Huh?? Of the US carriers, DL is the one who operates the most overseas services outside of its stateside hubs.

Even excluding Latin America, DL offers scheduled intercon nonstops from BOS, CVG, EWR, PHL, PIT, RDU, MCO, PDX and occasionally/seasonally ORD. This in addition to its hub gateways at ATL, JFK, DTW, MSP, LAX, SEA, and SLC.

Re: former GLO routes...

1) MSY-HSV...we won't see nonstop service in this market again in my lifetime. Kind of a strange experiment, to be honest. I get the NASA connection, but that's about it. It needs hub feed.
2) MSY-SHV....too short of a drive. Five hours tops. I usually do it in 4h45m including stopping for gas. And without speeding. And as far as business connections, this isn't like connecting Houston and Dallas. Just not that much business traffic to fill the planes day in, day out.
3) MSY-MEM...O&D owned by Amtrak. It would take an ULCC to stimulate the market, IMO. And again, not a terribly far drive. Less than six hours. G4 twice-weekly perhaps? Long shot...
4) MSY-LIT...the best of the bunch and I think this one has a remote chance to be served by "someone" in the future. Distance wise, it's just long enough where people who are not a fan of long drives would consider flying. IIRC, it was GLO's most successful route since its inception.

Re: expanded DL service

I think if the BOS and SEA seasonal weekend experiments are successful, we could see those extended to year-round. Neither would surprise me. I don't see RDU happening now. I agree with NolaMD88fan...that ship has sailed. I do not see CDG or AMS. The local market is just too small at the current time, even if we want to try to convince ourselves otherwise. CUN needs to do much better if we ever have hopes of that going year-round.

SunsetLimited wrote:

Re: former GLO routes...

1) MSY-HSV...we won't see nonstop service in this market again in my lifetime. Kind of a strange experiment, to be honest. I get the NASA connection, but that's about it. It needs hub feed.
2) MSY-SHV....too short of a drive. Five hours tops. I usually do it in 4h45m including stopping for gas. And without speeding. And as far as business connections, this isn't like connecting Houston and Dallas. Just not that much business traffic to fill the planes day in, day out.
3) MSY-MEM...O&D owned by Amtrak. It would take an ULCC to stimulate the market, IMO. And again, not a terribly far drive. Less than six hours. G4 twice-weekly perhaps? Long shot...
4) MSY-LIT...the best of the bunch and I think this one has a remote chance to be served by "someone" in the future. Distance wise, it's just long enough where people who are not a fan of long drives would consider flying. IIRC, it was GLO's most successful route since its inception.

Re: expanded DL service

I think if the BOS and SEA seasonal weekend experiments are successful, we could see those extended to year-round. Neither would surprise me. I don't see RDU happening now. I agree with NolaMD88fan...that ship has sailed. I do not see CDG or AMS. The local market is just too small at the current time, even if we want to try to convince ourselves otherwise. CUN needs to do much better if we ever have hopes of that going year-round.

I would agree on HSV. SHV needs a prop plane to make the numbers work. I still think Silver with their network and codesharing could make it work, but it's not the highest priority. I was surprised they went with SHV over BHM which had air service much more recently prior to GLO.

I don't really get the Amtrak argument for MEM. I love trains and wish they were better, but I can't imagine many business travelers are taking 8-9 hour trip on a train when it's 6 by car. If anything, Amtrak's biggest competition is Greyhound, which is both cheaper and faster.

Consider that the BTS stats show both LIT and MEM to be about 15-16 PDEW and that's with connections and high fares. This, to my knowledge, doesn't include GLO, so it's probably in the 30-40 range. I think if you had a reliable operator whose flights were available on all of the travel sites and could sell to government agencies, both of these routes could fill a 50 seater.

To get to MEM on Greyhound, you have to change buses in BTR. So the trip is longer than Amtrak and the fares are more $. It's amazing how much direct service Greyhound has cut over the years in many city pairs. Megabus couldn't even make the market work.

I guess the point I was trying to make is simply that Amtrak has built a strong following in that market, especially over the past ten years. If you are looking at going to MEM from NOLA or vice versa and you're not one of the handful of business passengers (remember, it wasn't a very strong route for GLO, they reduced it to 1X daily rather quickly), and you don't want to drive, you don't really have another option besides the train...or an expensive connecting flight.

Amtrak will never compete for business travel with the airlines outside of the northeast or select midwest/west coast corridors, but a daily route like this which is well known and popular on both ends will absolutely appeal to a large swath of people.

Totally agree that we won't see DL or Skyteam adding TATL service here anytime soon. As the market grows, we may see it several years down the road though.

LIT was absolutely the best performing route for GLO. I think an outfit like Southern Airways Express would be a better fit for routes like LIT, MEM, or SHV if they were willing to try it. Smaller aircraft and an already decent network across the Gulf South.

NolaMD88fan wrote:

I think an outfit like Southern Airways Express would be a better fit for routes like LIT, MEM, or SHV if they were willing to try it.

Didn't they already do so, out of NEW?

They tried MEM-NEW when they first began flying. I think flying out of MSY would bring them more success since the vast majority of the flying public would never think of flying out of NEW for a commercial service flight. They are definitely willing to fly out of larger airports now with service at JAN, DFW, BWI, MEM, BNA, and PIT already in place. This change in strategy appears to be working well for them.

NEW just doesn't have the infrastructure both internally or externally to support regularly scheduled passenger traffic. They do fine with their GA traffic as most of that is handled via livery service to and from, but anything like regional turbo-prop service won't have downtown shuttles, taxis lined up waiting to go, a rental car agency, and Uber/Lyft will be slow to respond given the surrounding neighborhood's socio-economic conditions and crime stats.

Heathrow reported their stats today for July. 6,119 passengers flown on approximately 7,704 seats (used 788 seat count). Comes out to 79.4% load factor for the month. 80.3% load factor for the first 4 months of operation. Overall, a solid start for the route.

Additionally, DOC released visitor stats for the top overseas destinations for 2016 yesterday. New Orleans held steady at 23rd most visited destination, but did see a 1% decline in overall visitation. The state as a whole remained flat in terms of visitations. A little over half of the top destinations and states saw declines in overseas visitation from 2015 to 2016. I think the strong dollar is contributing to this. Seattle, Atlanta, and Chicago experienced the biggest drops. West Palm Beach, Grand Canyon area, Anaheim (Disneyland), and Ft. Lauderdale had the largest gains.

(UK Stats)
https://www.caa.co.uk/uploadedFiles/CAA ... alysis.pdf

(DOC Visitation Data)
http://tinet.ita.doc.gov/outreachpages/ ... 202016.pdf
http://tinet.ita.doc.gov/outreachpages/ ... States.pdf

SunsetLimited wrote:

Re: former GLO routes...

.CUN needs to do much better if we ever have hopes of that going year-round.

Cancun never works for me because its awful schedule.. cancun flights only work if they are multiple times a week. saturday only i wont ever fly

NolaMD88fan wrote:

Additionally, DOC released visitor stats for the top overseas destinations for 2016 yesterday. New Orleans held steady at 23rd most visited destination

I'm surprised by how close MSY and DFW actually are... it's less than 150 PDEW per day.

Granted, NOLA has massive tourism, with easy connections from nearly every major stateside hub; but still figured it'd be a much larger disparity, considering that DFW is a metro 6x larger, its airport has many times more intercon nonstops than MSY's two, and it's also an easy connection from everywhere.

The massive tourism draw of New Orleans for overseas visitors is very impressive. Even though DFW has way more people and ample connectivity through the AA hub, I don't think it has the tourism draw of New Orleans. After visiting a couple of museums and the stockyards in Ft. Worth, there isn't much else to do there. I'm sure the visitor counts skew heavily toward business related travel for DFW compared to MSY.

NolaMD88fan wrote:

The massive tourism draw of New Orleans for overseas visitors is very impressive. Even though DFW has way more people and ample connectivity through the AA hub, I don't think it has the tourism draw of New Orleans. After visiting a couple of museums and the stockyards in Ft. Worth, there isn't much else to do there. I'm sure the visitor counts skew heavily toward business related travel for DFW compared to MSY.

Yeah it does make sense. NOLA does seem to have come on strong lately for international travel though. But yeah short of business, I have no idea why anyone from overseas would really make an attempt to visit Dallas.

I'm British and used to live in Baton Rouge.

The amount of Brits who go to New Orleans on vacation and the number of tour companies who go through New Orleans and spend significant amount of time there is ridiculous. I'd say outside Vegas, Orlando and NYC its as popular as any other city with British tourists. Its very popular with Aussies too.

Didn't realise Southern operate a MEM-JAN service. Surely if they can manage that, they can manage MSY?

gravytrain wrote:

Its very popular with Aussies too.

You ain't kidding.

When I came back from AKL last summer, I met an extended family of 7 from Australia who was connecting in LAX to MSY.
Offered to give them some tips, and they responded "Thank you, but we're familiar, we go every other year. So do our friends. Everyone loves New Orleans where we're from."

I was taken aback, would've never thought that.
Wish I could see what the actual numbers are.

The QF flight to DFW has really opened up MSY for Aussie tourism. It's a very popular connection. I'd say a couple of dozen Aussie visitors fly out of MSY on the AA/QF codeshare daily, if I had to make a ballpark guess. Who knows how many UA gets, or DL for that matter.

SunsetLimited wrote:

The QF flight to DFW has really opened up MSY for Aussie tourism. It's a very popular connection. I'd say a couple of dozen Aussie visitors fly out of MSY on the AA/QF codeshare daily, if I had to make a ballpark guess. Who knows how many UA gets, or DL for that matter.

The Air New Zealand flight through Houston from Auckland has brought in a lot of Kiwis as well.

Tour companies like Topdeck and Contiki are bussing hundreds of Aussies and Kiwis through the city every week. New Orleans is the half way point and end of the west coast tour/start of the east coast tours as well, so many people come and go from the city as opposed to passing through as a tourist.

AA is running a fare sale to/from LAX for $128 r/t. How are they making money on this route?

http://www.theflightdeal.com/2017/08/18 ... -175853501

Nola wrote:

AA is running a fare sale to/from LAX for $128 r/t. How are they making money on this route?

http://www.theflightdeal.com/2017/08/18 ... -175853501

They always have that. UA often does it to.

It's not like they're selling every seat for that.

LAX772LR wrote:

Nola wrote:

AA is running a fare sale to/from LAX for $128 r/t. How are they making money on this route?

http://www.theflightdeal.com/2017/08/18 ... -175853501

They always have that. UA often does it to.

It's not like they're selling every seat for that.

yeah its all in the details.. but if you can make the restrictions work its a hell of deal for a flight

DJSNOLA wrote:

yeah its all in the details.. but if you can make the restrictions work its a hell of deal for a flight

Meh, that's our everyday reality here at LAX

AA routinely offers LAX-ORD roundtrip for $98.
DL routinely offers LAX-OAK roundtrip for $89 in Y, $199 in paid F.
EVERYONE routinely offers LAS and PHX roundtrip for $99 or less. NK sometimes does $69!


Even int'l can get crazy:
BR, CA, and MU routinely offer various Asian nonstops for $599 roundtrip or less.
CM routinely offers BOG, BAQ, GRU, GIG for $399 roundtrip or less.


And best of all? I scored AA to AKL for $250 rountrip.... and it was upgradeable!












......and naturally, I had to drag my travel buddy to the Lord of the Rings set. He loved it:

That's an amazing price for Auckland and upgradable! The only way I can find decent international deals from MSY is to fly on two separate tickets--one to the gateway and back, the other from the gateway to/from the destination.

Nola wrote:

That's an amazing price for Auckland and upgradable!

Yep, QF was offering it even cheaper that day: $225.
Theirs wasn't upgradeable though.

Here's the original notification that I got, still have it saved.
http://www.theflightdeal.com/2016/04/12 ... all-taxes/

Nola wrote:

The only way I can find decent international deals from MSY is to fly on two separate tickets--one to the gateway and back, the other from the gateway to/from the destination.

I never used to have that problem back in my NOLA days, though of course then, the only way you were going int'l was via ATL/IAH/MIA.

I guess now that they've seen how lucrative the market can be, the prices now reflect it.

Finally got this finished...2016 mainline passenger rankings for MSY. These figures do not include regional jet passengers. Air Canada is the only scheduled airline flying here that is fully regional jet service, so they aren't included in the spreadsheet. Rank is for US stations only.

WN = 22nd busiest station...no change from 2015.
DL = 21st busiest mainline station...up 3 spots from 2015.
UA = 22nd busiest mainline station...no change from 2015.
AA = 32nd busiest mainline station...up 3 spots from 2015.
NK = 21st busiest station...up 1 spot from 2015.
B6 = 32nd busiest station...up 5 spots from 2015.
F9 = 36th busiest station.
G4 = 40th busiest station.
AS = 46th busiest station.
CM = 12th busiest station...out of 12 US stations.

More detail in the spreadsheets.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p5t1YsksQ9RpzxL2omwRBw5wDVU7PRH85_ajgFWfHvU/edit?usp=sharing

NolaMD88fan wrote:

Finally got this finished...2016 mainline passenger rankings for MSY. These figures do not include regional jet passengers. Air Canada is the only scheduled airline flying here that is fully regional jet service, so they aren't included in the spreadsheet. Rank is for US stations only.

WN = 22nd busiest station...no change from 2015.
DL = 21st busiest mainline station...up 3 spots from 2015.
UA = 22nd busiest mainline station...no change from 2015.
AA = 32nd busiest mainline station...up 3 spots from 2015.
NK = 21st busiest station...up 1 spot from 2015.
B6 = 32nd busiest station...up 5 spots from 2015.
F9 = 36th busiest station.
G4 = 40th busiest station.
AS = 46th busiest station.
CM = 12th busiest station...out of 12 US stations.

More detail in the spreadsheets.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p5t1YsksQ9RpzxL2omwRBw5wDVU7PRH85_ajgFWfHvU/edit?usp=sharing

great information ... thanks for this!

G4 extended their schedule to May 2018. A few things for MSY:

To my surprise, CLE comes back for a few months in the spring.
CVG, IND, and RDU go 3 weekly for at least some part of the spring.
USA, PIT, LCK, PIE, CLE, and SFB are all 2 weekly for the spring schedule.

msycajun wrote:

G4 extended their schedule to May 2018. A few things for MSY:

To my surprise, CLE comes back for a few months in the spring.
CVG, IND, and RDU go 3 weekly for at least some part of the spring.
USA, PIT, LCK, PIE, CLE, and SFB are all 2 weekly for the spring schedule.

Where can I find this information?

Midwestindy wrote:

msycajun wrote:

G4 extended their schedule to May 2018. A few things for MSY:

To my surprise, CLE comes back for a few months in the spring.
CVG, IND, and RDU go 3 weekly for at least some part of the spring.
USA, PIT, LCK, PIE, CLE, and SFB are all 2 weekly for the spring schedule.

Where can I find this information?

Was just looking at the booking engine on their website.

Playing around with the schedules, it looks like there may be a hole when an aircraft arrives from IND in the morning and doesn't depart until mid-afternoon, so there could be some new routes coming. Then again, could just be that it is an evolving schedule.

I don't recall hearing about these spirit routs prior to today, did I miss that?

http://ir.spirit.com/releasedetail.cfm? ... ID=1038189

Good to see NK expanding service even more here. Nice to have some competition to BOS and MSP now. NK will definitely be using gates C2 and C4 on a full time basis with these new routes. Also, good to see G4 going to 3x weekly on some routes. RDU and CVG are not surprising given the strong load factors on those routes.

MSY will have ULCC to 28 airports, IINM, between G4/F9/NK once these new routes are added.

SunsetLimited wrote:

MSY will have ULCC to 28 airports, IINM, between G4/F9/NK once these new routes are added.

thats really great for the city from a tourism standpoint.. lots of last minute getaways become much more appealing with these cheaper flights. im especially excited about the newark spirit flight and the boston spirit flight.. i hope spirit adds philly soon

Here's the article from the Advocate.

http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/ ... ca0b2.html

The DL BOS flight was weekend only, wasn't it? Does this make them go daily?

Yup...weekend only and seasonal. Not sure if this will make them go daily.

NolaMD88fan wrote:

Yup...weekend only and seasonal. Not sure if this will make them go daily.

i just dont understand why most wouldnt choose jet blue or spirit at this point?

DJSNOLA wrote:

NolaMD88fan wrote:

Yup...weekend only and seasonal. Not sure if this will make them go daily.

i just dont understand why most wouldnt choose jet blue or spirit at this point?

There are a lot of very loyal DL flyers who don't want to waste flights without getting points. Moreover, I know a lot of people who refuse to fly Spirit.

Any update on GLO?

Re: GLO
Planes are gone for weeks now. Bankruptcy filing changed from Chp 11 reorganizaton to Chp 7 Liquidation. As an ongoing concern, GLO is effectively no more.

Southwest adding 1x weekly non-stops to SMF and SJC.

Also Cancun 1x weekly.

jbs2886 wrote:

Southwest adding 1x weekly non-stops to SMF and SJC.

Also Cancun 1x weekly.

From MSY?

msyflyer wrote:

jbs2886 wrote:

Southwest adding 1x weekly non-stops to SMF and SJC.

Also Cancun 1x weekly.

From MSY?

Yes.

WN will be up to about 62 departures on Sundays and 57 on weekdays. As far as I know they are only using 6 gates. Sundays will be busy!

Although I am happy to see the new routes, it is a bit disappointing that no daily service has been added. Still 1 weekly to IND, CMH, RDU, and PIT, even as G4 is going up to 3 weekly on many of those.

It seems that they were targeting AS with this latest release. I wouldn't be surprised to see AS add SAN and maybe even LAX and SJC in the coming months, along with PDX which I think is about due for a nonstop.

msycajun wrote:

msyflyer wrote:

jbs2886 wrote:

Southwest adding 1x weekly non-stops to SMF and SJC.

Also Cancun 1x weekly.

From MSY?

Yes.

WN will be up to about 62 departures on Sundays and 57 on weekdays. As far as I know they are only using 6 gates. Sundays will be busy!

Although I am happy to see the new routes, it is a bit disappointing that no daily service has been added. Still 1 weekly to IND, CMH, RDU, and PIT, even as G4 is going up to 3 weekly on many of those.

It seems that they were targeting AS with this latest release. I wouldn't be surprised to see AS add SAN and maybe even LAX and SJC in the coming months, along with PDX which I think is about due for a nonstop.

Lol. Why would I post this in the MSY thread if the flights were not from MSY?

jbs2886 wrote:

Southwest adding 1x weekly non-stops to SMF and SJC.

Also Cancun 1x weekly.

How many carriers does that make between MSY and CUN now?

Nola wrote:

jbs2886 wrote:

Southwest adding 1x weekly non-stops to SMF and SJC.

Also Cancun 1x weekly.

How many carriers does that make between MSY and CUN now?

Overall, four.

Scheduled: DL, WN, UA
Scheduled charter: Vacation Express

SunsetLimited wrote:

Nola wrote:

jbs2886 wrote:

Southwest adding 1x weekly non-stops to SMF and SJC.

Also Cancun 1x weekly.

How many carriers does that make between MSY and CUN now?

Overall, four.

Scheduled: DL, WN, UA
Scheduled charter: Vacation Express

and still no one more than once a week... it would be nice if they were at least different days.. glad to see the service but it would be nice if cancun was at least three times a week

msycajun wrote:

msyflyer wrote:

jbs2886 wrote:

Southwest adding 1x weekly non-stops to SMF and SJC.

Also Cancun 1x weekly.

From MSY?

Yes.

WN will be up to about 62 departures on Sundays and 57 on weekdays. As far as I know they are only using 6 gates. Sundays will be busy!

Although I am happy to see the new routes, it is a bit disappointing that no daily service has been added. Still 1 weekly to IND, CMH, RDU, and PIT, even as G4 is going up to 3 weekly on many of those.

It seems that they were targeting AS with this latest release. I wouldn't be surprised to see AS add SAN and maybe even LAX and SJC in the coming months, along with PDX which I think is about due for a nonstop.

interesting what makes you think they are targeting alaskan with this? just curious~ been wanting a San Jose flight for a while so good to see it starting.

People really need to get over the "daily" obsession.

Sure it's nice to have, but if a flight doesn't operate at a particular time, then it's for a reason.