KWBL From United States of America, joined Jun 2001, 438 posts, RR: 0 Posted (2 years 5 days 7 hours ago) and read 1601 times:
I flew my first segment on Skywest operating as Alaska the other day. I was thinking what would be the possibility of Alaska using Skywest, or some other regional carrier, to serve smaller Northwest cities with 30-37 seat planes. In my opinion, the transition to an all Q-400 left many NW markets with less, or no, service because the Q-400 is too big. Now that they have set a precendent using someone other than Horizon to operate "express" type service, is this something we could see down the road. Seems like there are several markets that would benefit from this.
rfields5421 From United States of America, joined Jul 2007, 6150 posts, RR: 25 Reply 2, posted (2 years 5 days ago) and read 1355 times:
Quoting KWBL (Thread starter): , to serve smaller Northwest cities with 30-37 seat planes.
Markets which can only support that type service are pretty much unprofitable for any airline without subsidies in today's world. Or ticket prices so high as to make people want to drive four hours rather than pay the price.
Overall, I think we will see a decline in service to smaller markets over the next decade in the US and probably much of the world. If a city won't support a couple Q-400 / 70 seat CRJ flights per day - it will not have daily airline service.
Cessna172RG From United States of America, joined Aug 2000, 744 posts, RR: 0 Reply 3, posted (2 years 4 days 22 hours ago) and read 1226 times:
I used to work at Horizon. I remember when they stopped Port Angeles DH8B service about six years ago. Later, they cut service to Pocatello. Other than that...Horizon is still serving the vast majority of cities that it always has, with Q4's, and while the Q4 is a "big" aircraft for some of these markets, Horizon only has to fill one of these planes to the halfway mark before they start turning a profit. So, technically, these cities are getting their 30-37 seat turboprop service in the form of an overpowered gooney bird.
N202PA From United States of America, joined Jun 2000, 1549 posts, RR: 4 Reply 5, posted (2 years 4 days 18 hours ago) and read 929 times:
Instead of Skywest, wouldn't Great Lakes Airlines be the natural contender to step in and fill out service to markets that can't be profitably served by the Q400s? The EMB-120 and B1900 equipment could service markets with between 19-30 seats per flight and allow AS to tap into the rest of GLA's route map via codeshare.
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