Hi everyone...looking at Departedflights.com I notice that in 1981, there were no less than 12 airlines flew from Miami to Fort Lauderdale! Of these, 9 were on larger (Boeing 727/737 and up, AKA mainline jet) aircraft. To anyone familiar with this, why so many flights and seats for a trip that's 30 minutes by car and couldn't take more than 10 minutes in the air??

Also why so many airlines on the route back then?

The page lists (LA: Boeings, Douglas, Lockheed or Airbus jets used)
Air Florida (LA)
Braniff (LA)
Continental (LA)
Delta (LA)
Eastern (LA)
Northwest Ortient (LA)
Ozark (LA)
Pan Am )LA)
Republic (LA)
Sun Air International
Trans Island Airlines
Western (LA)

Even Western, which was much bigger in the West Coast, was in the game!

(as a PS, the same page also has Lan Chile flying Boeing 707 MIA-JFK and Lufthansa flying 747 LAX-SFO)

What was the deal???

http://www.departedflights.com/MIA81intro.html

Have you seen the traffic and drivers of Miami? For those whose time is really money, the expense is a worthy one that saves a lot of rage, frustration, gridlock, chaos, and overall confusion (at a price). Miami drivers are among the worst of the worst and anyone who could afford to escape it probably would.

For anyone that doesn't believe me, Miami just passed a law that will arrest anyone blasting loud music in their cars, and this is just scratching the surface of what SFL drivers are capable of.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/c ... 82284.html

http://www.miami.com/funny-stories/miam ... er-169474/

These flights were "tag-on" flights. For example, WA LAX-MIA-FLL, OZ MIA-FLL-STL, PA had a MIA-FLL-MSY, even AA had a DFW-MIA-FLL & vice-versa flight. They were mostly to pick up additional passengers.
Back then, and up to the 80's, MIA and FLL were worlds apart. If you lived in MIA, FLL was in another planet (and vice versa). I remember how there was "green" between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale. Now it's just one huge concrete jungle and the the metropolitan area stretches up all the way up to and past West Palm Beach.
When I worked in FLL in the 80's, I would catch a flight down to MIA to connect to the Caribbean as back then there were no FLL-Caribbean flights.
How times have changed.
(Ps: and yes, traffic now is horrific down here as Neomax stated. The worse of the worst drivers and gridlocks virtually all day long).

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SF traffic is no joke. The worst drivers on the planet. Crazy that these 2 airports had flights between them though that's like flying ORD-MDW or JFK-EWR.

On a side note didn't B6 (a few years back) fly between LAX and ONT to avoid traffic for locals looking to hit the beach for the day?

This had nothing to do with traffic back then. Tag flights were still very popular back then. Nothing more, nothing less.

I lived in Ft. Lauderdale back then. Used Miami airport at times. Always drove to the Miami airport. I knew these flights existed, but driving was no big deal, and much, much more convenient.

Around the time mentioned here, 1981, I flew DCA-FLL-MIA on EA, aircraft was a D9S.
Sich tag flights were quite normal in These days.

I did the AA DFW-MIA-FLL-DFW run. All on 727. Best part of the trip was parking next to a Prride Air 727 at FLL.

I live in Miami and avoid driving when I can. Driving up to FLL on 95 is a life altering event and not in a good way.

Back in the mid/late-1980s, DL used to have scheduled L1011 flight from the NE nonstop to MIA. I think it originated at JFK or LGA, arriving MIA in late evening. It would drop off the MIA passengers, then do a quick turn to FLL. I think the scheduled time MIA to FLL was something crazy like 9 minutes, arriving FLL around 11pm-midnight. The Tristar would then overnight at FLL.

Let me rephrase what I said earlier. These tags back in the day had NOTHING.to do with how good or bad traffic was on I-95. Nothing. These tags were just something the airlines did back in that era.

I can also remember those L1011 tags. Fun times.

ILS28ORD wrote:

SF traffic is no joke. The worst drivers on the planet. Crazy that these 2 airports had flights between them though that's like flying ORD-MDW or JFK-EWR.

On a side note didn't B6 (a few years back) fly between LAX and ONT to avoid traffic for locals looking to hit the beach for the day?

B6 offered that when they closed a ten mile link of the 405 for a weekend and it was dubbed “Carmaggedon” and the local media said it would be chaos. It was between BUR and LGB, which is like 30 miles and it was like $5 IIRC. But it wasn’t that bad.

BroadwayLimited wrote:

Let me rephrase what I said earlier. These tags back in the day had NOTHING.to do with how good or bad traffic was on I-95. Nothing. These tags were just something the airlines did back in that era.

I can also remember those L1011 tags. Fun times.

Exactly

During the Airliners Int'l Convention FLL in 1981 myself and Martin Marlow booked a last-minute round-trip on TWA MIA-FLL-MIA for $36 just to fly a 707-131B...N781TW was the bird. Didn't even deplane at FLL...stayed onboard chatting with the cabin crew. Turned out to be my only 707-100 flights.

In August 1979 my first flights on Eastern Airlines were FLL-MIA-FLL when I flew to MIA from DEN for my very first spotting day-trip there. Southbound on EA was a 727-25C N8153G and northbound was a DC-9-31 N8952E. Both were very late in the evening (midnight-ish) To get to Florida in the first place I did UA DEN-ORD-FLL roundtrip, taking advantage of 50%-off coupon UA issued to travellers during the DC-10 grounding after AA 191 at ORD. The UA flights were DC-10, 727-200, 727-200, DC-10 N1830U, N7638U, N7647U, N1823U. Good times!!

Still one would think that there would be some sort of niche market there for routes like MIA FLL, IAH HOU, OAK SFO for a small carrier using 208s or B1900s

Having flew the EFD IAH cross the city service a few times, it was always packed to the gills.

Things were different back then. I remember riding on a tag leg LAX-SAN in the 70s, American B707, fare eight dollars, flight time eighteen minutes. Several airlines flew that same route every day. National and Delta come to mind. In college near San Jose California, each evening I could watch a TW 707 pass by my dorm window that was doing a tag leg from SFO. Later on in life, I was a Flight Engineer on some SEA-PDX tag legs. The industry evolved as fuel prices increased.

And don't forget the United States to Europe flights. The US airlines flying US to Europe, (TW,PA, UA,DL, etc), a couple of decades ago, had lots of tags, once the flights got to Europe. Even when Delta bought the Pan Am European routes in 1991, they started out with tags within Europe..

Again different era back then.

yellowtail wrote:

Still one would think that there would be some sort of niche market there for routes like MIA FLL, IAH HOU, OAK SFO for a small carrier using 208s or B1900s

Having flew the EFD IAH cross the city service a few times, it was always packed to the gills.

Speaking for MIA-FLL, no. Using downtown Miami and downtown Fort Lauderdale as starting points, outside of rush hour the drive from Downtown MIA to FLL airport is 35 minutes. It’d take longer to drive to the airport, clear security and wait at your gate than to drive. From Downtown FLL to MIA outside of rush hour, it’s a 40 minute drive. Again, longer to drive to the airport, clear security and wait at the gate.

During rush hour, from Downtown MIA to FLL transit time balloons to 60-90 minutes. However, transit time to MIA also balloons significantly and there’s be no time saving. Same for the reverse from downtown FLL to MIA. This essentially applies to any starting point in either direction. Unless you live at one airport and your destination was the other airport itself.

In 1987 or thereabouts I flew FLL-PBI-DFW on a Delta DC-8-70..It was an interesting hop!

In 1980, Miami was a fraction of the size it is today. It wasn't far removed from being a sleepy little big city with retirees. Then the 1980s came and the Cocaine trade built the modern Miami skyline. Population boomed over the next 30 years and development spread west into the Everglades. I'm sure the drive from FLL to MIA was much easier 40 years ago?

When I'm in the FLL/MIA area and need to go from one city to the other, I use Tri-Rail to avoid rush hour traffic, and then catch an Uber to get to my final destination from wherever I get off the train. You fly by all the traffic backed up on the turnpike.

Western was flying DC-10-10 aircraft on the LAX-MIA-FLL flight & it also a for a short time & only a few days a week, WA ran that same DC-10-10 LAX-MIA-NAS.

ILS28ORD wrote:

SF traffic is no joke. The worst drivers on the planet. Crazy that these 2 airports had flights between them though that's like flying ORD-MDW or JFK-EWR.

On a side note didn't B6 (a few years back) fly between LAX and ONT to avoid traffic for locals looking to hit the beach for the day?

Nope, JetBlue flew between LGB and BUR.

Back in the late 70's I flew on an Air Florida 737 flight that flew the route JFK-PBI-FLL-MIA. If I remember correctly, the majority of the passengers got off the plane in PBI, possibly around 10 in FLL, and it continued on to MIA with only one passenger on board.

The hub-spoke model wasn't as sophisticated as it is today. Tag flights made sense to maximize assets and position planes for the next day flying. There are old posts on here about the crazy number of DC10s,L10s & even 747s flying tags like LAX-SAN, SEA-PDX, BDL-BOS & NY area,etc. DL ran a bunch of 727 tags from MSY to BTR, AEX & MLU on the way to ATL or DFW.

Italianflyer wrote:

The hub-spoke model wasn't as sophisticated as it is today. Tag flights made sense to maximize assets and position planes for the next day flying. There are old posts on here about the crazy number of DC10s,L10s & even 747s flying tags like LAX-SAN, SEA-PDX, BDL-BOS & NY area,etc. DL ran a bunch of 727 tags from MSY to BTR, AEX & MLU on the way to ATL or DFW.

Agreed.


Delta flew an L10 BDL-BOS-BDA and return into the 90s. DL also flew BDL-PBI-FLL and BDL-FLL-PBI with the 727 and 757.

[quote="AntonioMartin"] To anyone familiar with this, why so many flights and seats for a trip that's 30 minutes by car and couldn't take more than 10 minutes in the air??

You say, 30 minutes by car. That is easy to say if you live there and have a car. Someone coming from somewhere else (foreign country, other city) would have to rent a car drive there, return the car. So much easier to fly. Easy if you live there and want to drive, but not if you don't live there. There was no public transportation back then (and what is there today)?

You cannot just look at something from your perspective and time frame.

TonyBurr wrote:

AntonioMartin wrote:

To anyone familiar with this, why so many flights and seats for a trip that's 30 minutes by car and couldn't take more than 10 minutes in the air??

You say, 30 minutes by car. That is easy to say if you live there and have a car. Someone coming from somewhere else (foreign country, other city) would have to rent a car drive there, return the car. So much easier to fly. Easy if you live there and want to drive, but not if you don't live there. There was no public transportation back then (and what is there today)?

You cannot just look at something from your perspective and time frame.

Someone not from metro Miami would just take a taxi, Uber, Lyft, Tri-Rail, etc. to transfer between airports.

I truly don’t understand why anyone would think flights between MIA and FLL would make sense for O&D purposes. It’s laughable (idiotic) on the face of it. I could kind of understand if people were saying MIA-PBI (although that too doesn’t make any sense) but MIA-FLL is preposterous.

In the early 80s Air Florida flew DTW-CLE-MIA-FLL

Quoting Italianflyer (Reply #24), "The hub-spoke model wasn't as sophisticated as it is today. Tag flights made sense to maximize assets and position planes for the next day flying."

In addition, in the 1980s, airlines did not have nearly as many aircraft in their fleets as they have today, so tag flights, as well as a linear route structure serving numerous airports, made sense in order to maximize the numbers of destinations served.

e38

Brickell305 wrote:

TonyBurr wrote:

AntonioMartin wrote:

To anyone familiar with this, why so many flights and seats for a trip that's 30 minutes by car and couldn't take more than 10 minutes in the air??

I truly don’t understand why anyone would think flights between MIA and FLL would make sense for O&D purposes. It’s laughable (idiotic) on the face of it. I could kind of understand if people were saying MIA-PBI (although that too doesn’t make any sense) but MIA-FLL is preposterous.

Using the MIA FLL example......say you were flying from a city that had no FLL service.....Say SCL.....and wanted to get to FLL.......it is not out of the real of possibility that you could do SCL MIA FLL....

Lots of people do XXX-ATL-CHA for example and frankly at about 100 miles....it is faster to drive most of the time too.

yellowtail wrote:

Brickell305 wrote:

TonyBurr wrote:

Using the MIA FLL example......say you were flying from a city that had no FLL service.....Say SCL.....and wanted to get to FLL.......it is not out of the real of possibility that you could do SCL MIA FLL....

Lots of people do XXX-ATL-CHA for example and frankly at about 100 miles....it is faster to drive most of the time too.

In your example, you’re referring to two distinct markets. MIA and FLL do not serve two distinct markets. If you’re flying in to South Florida from SLC, you could drive to your final destination from MIA in the same way you’d be able to drive to your final destination from FLL. Yes, there are people who may PREFER to fly in to either of the airports because it’s closer to where they live/work but please don’t confuse the fact that either of the airports may be preferred by some people to mean that they serve two different markets. They don’t.

A MIA-FLL flight for transfers/connections would never work. Why do you think that none of the airlines that have hubs in Metro Miami, despite their varying sizes, market dynamics and functions, provide this service? We have AA out of MIA, B6, WN and Silver out of FLL and not one of them thinks it worthwhile to provide this service.

Again, the thought of an MIA-FLL flight as a viable route is laughable on its face. It’s like asking why there aren’t flights between EWR, LGA and JFK or between LHR and LGW. It really makes absolutely zero sense.

Tag flights used to be more acceptable when airlines had load factors of 50% or less and made money doing so. I think years back Eagle had MIA/PBI and recently restarted RSW/MIA on a seasonal basis.

The reason Eastern had FLL-MIA-FLL schedules was nothing more than aircraft and crew positioning.
MIA was the major major maintenance base and crew base. The aircraft could be rotated through their required checks that way, and the crew returned to base. This was especially true of widebody aircraft, which were required to be in a maintenance base each night. It also had some minor marketing/traffic effect by allowing both stations to be marketed as being served by a single flight, but that was not the reason it was done. It was really a positioning flight. Back then I worked in both aircraft routing and strategic planning/scheduling.

The ground traffic situation on the highways had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Brickell305 wrote:

yellowtail wrote:

Brickell305 wrote:

Using the MIA FLL example......say you were flying from a city that had no FLL service.....Say SCL.....and wanted to get to FLL.......it is not out of the real of possibility that you could do SCL MIA FLL....

Lots of people do XXX-ATL-CHA for example and frankly at about 100 miles....it is faster to drive most of the time too.

In your example, you’re referring to two distinct markets. MIA and FLL do not serve two distinct markets. If you’re flying in to South Florida from SLC, you could drive to your final destination from MIA in the same way you’d be able to drive to your final destination from FLL. Yes, there are people who may PREFER to fly in to either of the airports because it’s closer to where they live/work but please don’t confuse the fact that either of the airports may be preferred by some people to mean that they serve two different markets. They don’t.

A MIA-FLL flight for transfers/connections would never work. Why do you think that none of the airlines that have hubs in Metro Miami, despite their varying sizes, market dynamics and functions, provide this service? We have AA out of MIA, B6, WN and Silver out of FLL and not one of them thinks it worthwhile to provide this service.

Again, the thought of an MIA-FLL flight as a viable route is laughable on its face. It’s like asking why there aren’t flights between EWR, LGA and JFK or between LHR and LGW. It really makes absolutely zero sense.

Seems that it has been fairly well established in the thread that a lot of these were tag flights, or rotating aircraft, etc. Plus, as was pointed out, 40 years ago the market dynamics of the MIA / FLL area were much different.

Tag flights were common in a lot of places.... SEA and PDX, LAX and SAN, Braniff flights and TWA 747s/L-1011s SFO - LAX before continuing to South America or Europe, etc. I recall riding on L-1011s and 707s between LAX and SAN. The plane might start in the tag city, then stop in the larger one before heading to the final destination because....there wasn't enough traffic for a flight from the tag city by itself. Heck, UA used to have scheduled flights between OAK and SFO to rotate planes to the OAK maintenance base.

cschleic wrote:

Brickell305 wrote:

yellowtail wrote:

Using the MIA FLL example......say you were flying from a city that had no FLL service.....Say SCL.....and wanted to get to FLL.......it is not out of the real of possibility that you could do SCL MIA FLL....

Lots of people do XXX-ATL-CHA for example and frankly at about 100 miles....it is faster to drive most of the time too.

In your example, you’re referring to two distinct markets. MIA and FLL do not serve two distinct markets. If you’re flying in to South Florida from SLC, you could drive to your final destination from MIA in the same way you’d be able to drive to your final destination from FLL. Yes, there are people who may PREFER to fly in to either of the airports because it’s closer to where they live/work but please don’t confuse the fact that either of the airports may be preferred by some people to mean that they serve two different markets. They don’t.

A MIA-FLL flight for transfers/connections would never work. Why do you think that none of the airlines that have hubs in Metro Miami, despite their varying sizes, market dynamics and functions, provide this service? We have AA out of MIA, B6, WN and Silver out of FLL and not one of them thinks it worthwhile to provide this service.

Again, the thought of an MIA-FLL flight as a viable route is laughable on its face. It’s like asking why there aren’t flights between EWR, LGA and JFK or between LHR and LGW. It really makes absolutely zero sense.

Seems that it has been fairly well established in the thread that a lot of these were tag flights, or rotating aircraft, etc. Plus, as was pointed out, 40 years ago the market dynamics of the MIA / FLL area were much different.

Tag flights were common in a lot of places.... SEA and PDX, LAX and SAN, Braniff flights and TWA 747s/L-1011s SFO - LAX before continuing to South America or Europe, etc. I recall riding on L-1011s and 707s between LAX and SAN. The plane might start in the tag city, then stop in the larger one before heading to the final destination because....there wasn't enough traffic for a flight from the tag city by itself. Heck, UA used to have scheduled flights between OAK and SFO to rotate planes to the OAK maintenance base.

Obviously, from the context, I'm not referring to tag flights. I'm referring to the ridiculous notion of MIA-FLL working as a standalone route.

PennPal wrote:

and it continued on to MIA with only one passenger on board.

Was it you??

AntonioMartin wrote:

PennPal wrote:

and it continued on to MIA with only one passenger on board.

Was it you??

No, I wasn't me! I deplaned in FLL...

PennPal wrote:

AntonioMartin wrote:

PennPal wrote:

and it continued on to MIA with only one passenger on board.

Was it you??

No, I wasn't me! I deplaned in FLL...

Ah well...

Long time ago, like 1963, I was booked to fly on a Mackey Airlines DC-6 from Ft. Lauderdale to Miami for the huge sum of $2.50. The flight was on a routing of FLL to MIA to GGT (Georgetown, Exuma). Before departing FLL, mechanical difficulty ensued and Mackey decided to cancel the flight and put all the GGT passengers on a non-stop FLL to GGT departing 3 hours later. I was the only passenger destined for MIA and thought for sure I was screwed. Well in the end no worry, Mackey rolled out another DC-6 from the hangar at FLL and flew me all by myself to MIA! All that for $2.50!

I recall in the late 80's, flying to FLL from DEN on a UA DC8-71 with that stop in MIA, thus a DEN-MIA-FLL Routing.

Several days later my return DC8 took a MX delay. Was re-routed FLL-ORD-SFO, all in first, both on DC8-71's...those were my last first class rides on DC8's as best I recall.