Ranking Aircraft types by the number of domestic operations in the USA we get 8 types are responsible for 2/3 of the seats in commercial operations. Four of these types are regional jets and four are single aisle jets (no surprises as they are B737, B738, A320, and A321).

Roughly 44% of the nation lives in one of the 42 urban areas with population over 1 million. So it is reasonable to say that almost half the country would not have local commercial aviation without regional jets. My own urban area (Ranked #61) has daily Boeing 717 service, between 2 or 3 Allegiant jets (A319-A320) and the rest regional jets.

Average number of seats |Type | % of commercial aviation seats
141.0 Boeing 737-700 15.81%
167.1 Boeing 737-800 31.80%
75.1 Embraer ERJ-175 37.54%
161.0 Airbus Industrie A320-100/200 47.79%
49.9 Canadair RJ-200ER /RJ-440 50.86%
76.4 Canadair CRJ 900 54.86%
188.8 Airbus Industrie A321 64.12%
50.0 Embraer-145 66.48%
----------------
134.1 Airbus Industrie A319 72.60%
68.5 Canadair RJ-700 75.34%
179.1 Boeing 737-900ER 82.25%
117.8 Boeing 757-200 85.18%
115.2 Boeing 717-200 87.74%
145.8 McDonnell Douglas DC9 Super 80/MD81/82/83/88 90.68%
99.8 Embraer 190 92.10%
32.7 Boeing 767-300/300ER 92.48%
69.6 Emb-170 93.17%
44.0 Embraer-140 93.56%
184.9 Airbus Industrie A320-200n 94.93%
76.0 De Havilland DHC8-400 Dash-8 95.48%
158.0 McDonnell Douglas MD-90 96.42%
234.0 Boeing 757-300 97.26%
178.4 Boeing 737-900 97.74%


But what about airports with severely constrained runways? Would it be proper to give them the right to ban certain types of jets? Bans could extend not just to regional jets but even to smaller single aisle jets with fewer than 150 seats that were more popular more than a decade ago like B737-700, A319, and B717 and MD88.

Why? ATC handles the traffic and most of those airports are not capacity limited?

If you want an unregulated market you need to have a competitive market. That means three or more carriers non-stop on major city pairs like CHI-NYC; ideally airport pairs because, as an example, people will argue that ORD-EWR is vastly more convenient than MDW-LGA for some segment of the traveling population. It means multiple one-stop carriers to smaller metros and between smaller metros. Example: PWM (number 91 in domestic passengers) - IND (number 46 in domestic passengers) can be served PWM-DTW-IND, PWM-EWR-IND, PWM-LGA-IND, PWM-PHL-IND... With hub traffic even a small city pair like PWM-IND can see constructed maybe twenty itineraries a day that are reasonably time efficient, and competition by three carriers on a pair that would be very, very unlikely for even a single non-stop.

Now, if you want to argue that LGA and EWR are really busy and should never see anything with fewer than 150 seats you will:

- utterly crush non-stop services from many hubs to these number 50 and smaller airports (Check FSDan's work on the number of RJs out of LGA/EWR/ORD/CLT, etc., and then look at hub carrier route maps and aircraft assignments.)

- crush the connectivity between small markets (I think my PWM-IND example of 20 itins gets reduced to a single DL MD-90 PWM-ATL + DL MD-88 ATL-IND)

- thus have longer connection times, diminishing the value of flying at all

- greatly reduce the number of carriers competing on many, many airport pairs/city pairs, likely allowing prices to rise significantly

You just killed domestic aviation in a misguided attempt to make it marginally more time efficient (via less congestion at a few airports but with an unknown efficiency loss from killing RJ non-stops). How often did knowledgeable people espouse the virtues of Soviet planning?

This idea stinks of elitism. If you’re not in this group, you don’t deserve to fly (here).

The purchase of slots and the fee per landing is the best tools for an airport to manage its traffic. The first step with this is removing the general aviation from the airport.

The percentages noted in the OP seen odd, how does the Q400 have 95% of anything

76.0 De Havilland DHC8-400 Dash-8 95.48%

JayinKitsap wrote:

The purchase of slots and the fee per landing is the best tools for an airport to manage its traffic. The first step with this is removing the general aviation from the airport.

The percentages noted in the OP seen odd, how does the Q400 have 95% of anything

76.0 De Havilland DHC8-400 Dash-8 95.48%

Public use airports are open to all of the public, including GA. You can’t just ban GA from an airport in the US

DiamondFlyer wrote:

JayinKitsap wrote:

The purchase of slots and the fee per landing is the best tools for an airport to manage its traffic. The first step with this is removing the general aviation from the airport.

The percentages noted in the OP seen odd, how does the Q400 have 95% of anything

76.0 De Havilland DHC8-400 Dash-8 95.48%

Public use airports are open to all of the public, including GA. You can’t just ban GA from an airport in the US

Quite true, but charging a high landing fee for all aircraft does move a lot of GA flights, that is really the only remedy they have.

True, but the airline-centric airports don’t see a lot of GA traffic anyway. TEB vs. LGA or EWR. MDW or DPG vs. ORD. PDK or FTY vs. ATL. Money rarely will drive large bizjets our of an airport IF the airport’s location is important, see LCY, SJC or SFO.

If an airport is so capacity constrained than the FAA can impose slot program regime.

The FAA generally follows IATA WSG guidelines and best practices for slot administration.

In broad terms restrictions based on sizing is not allowed and considered anti competitive.

JayinKitsap wrote:

The purchase of slots and the fee per landing is the best tools for an airport to manage its traffic. The first step with this is removing the general aviation from the airport.

The percentages noted in the OP seen odd, how does the Q400 have 95% of anything

76.0 De Havilland DHC8-400 Dash-8 95.48%

I think those numbers are supposed to be presented as a cumulative table, meaning each aircraft's marginal share is actually (percentage noted for the type) - (percentage noted for the type above).

Otherwise, the 737-700 (15.81%), 737-800 (31.8%), E175 (37.54%) and A320 (47.79%) would already provide way over 100% of all commercial seats??

Why the OP would choose a cumulative notation isn't entirely clear to me in this context, though.

lugie wrote:

Otherwise, the 737-700 (15.81%), 737-800 (31.8%), E175 (37.54%) and A320 (47.79%) would already provide way over 100% of all commercial seats??
Why the OP would choose a cumulative notation isn't entirely clear to me in this context, though.

There were 125 Aircraft Types in the DOT database, so I listed the cumulative number of seats to know when I had a reasonable percentage before I get to some obscure leftovers (like B735s).

Four aircraft types represented 47.79% of the seats flown. In my opening sentence I said that 8 aircraft types represented 2/3 of the seats flown (4 aircraft types were single aisle, and 4 were regional jets).

LAXintl wrote:

If an airport is so capacity constrained than the FAA can impose slot program regime.

The FAA generally follows IATA WSG guidelines and best practices for slot administration.

In broad terms restrictions based on sizing is not allowed and considered anti competitive.

But slot programs end up reducing the number of smaller jets anyway, because once you pay for a slot it is not cost effective to fly a small jet.

If you want to talk about anti-competitive just imagine Las Vegas building a second airport in the Ivanpah Valley. What could be more anti competitive than being the airline sent to Ivanpah while another airline stays at McCarran?

While roughly 5% of the seats at LAS airport are on regional jets a restriction on any jet with less than 150 seats would completely cut out the regional companies, but every mainline airline has a sizeable number of jets with 150 seats or more. You would have to give two years notice because it would take some serious planning effort. Southwest Airlines, the biggest airline at McCarran still uses mostly the 143 seat jets at LAS

Frankly I don't see how Ivanpah is going to work. If you send all the foreign airlines out there it won't make much of a difference on congestion at McCarran. There simply aren't enough foreign flights.

Aeroméxico/Aeroméxico Connect
Air Canada Rouge
British Airways
Condor
Copa Airlines
Hainan Airlines
Edelweiss Air
El Al
Eurowings
Interjet
KLM
Korean Air
Level
Swoop
Virgin Atlantic
VivaAerobus
Volaris
WestJet


You can't send Southwest because they have the biggest share of the airport, and they won't move. If you use dice to randomly select a legacy airline (like United), then I think United will simply remove Las Vegas as a destination. Why should they fly to Ivanpah and be at such a competitive disadvantage over Delta and American. You can't move Hawaiian Airlines and ask them to compete against Southwest which is back at McCarran.

There is simply no way to make a functional airport at Ivanpah.

You could leave Allegiant Air and Southwest Airlines at McCarran, and move the others to Ivanpah

Contour Airlines (Embraer ERJ-135 only)
JSX (Embraer ERJ-135LR/145LR only)

American Airlines
Delta Air Lines/ Delta Connection
United Airlines/United Express
Alaska Airlines
Frontier Airlines
Hawaiian Airlines
JetBlue
Spirit Airlines
Sun Country Airlines

If they built Ivanpah, Mccarran would close like DEN did.

Another consideration is that frequency adds value to a route. Your single B712 flight per day could easily be dropped in favor of 2X/CRJ and, thus, add value to the traveler regarding layover time for a connecting flight. At the end of the day, it’s the carriers role to fill supply to meet demands. Put another way, if the public wants it, and is willing to pay for it, then some carrier would find a way to make it happen.

cal764 wrote:

Another consideration is that frequency adds value to a route. Your single B712 flight per day could easily be dropped in favor of 2X/CRJ and, thus, add value to the traveler regarding layover time for a connecting flight. At the end of the day, it’s the carriers role to fill supply to meet demands. Put another way, if the public wants it, and is willing to pay for it, then some carrier would find a way to make it happen.

I understand that frequency adds value. We all know that things like frequency bandwidth are allocated for private use, but what comes into consideration is not just the profits of the private business, but the public owns the airways, and they have to acknowledge the public return. A runway is a public utility, and the return on the runway has to be meet the public good, as well as private profit.

All the major airports in mainland USA are less than 1846 miles from ORD. In the last available month for BTS data the regional jet ERJ-175 with 76 seats had the longest daily scheduled flight at 1772 miles, but it had a one-off at 1973 miles. The average route was 607 miles.

So, in theory, it would be possible for AA to replace all of its domestic flights from ORD with flights using the ERJ-175. I'm saying "in theory" because right now it would not be possible with the pilot's contract. But new airlines like Moxy are going to be entirely built on the A220.

zero ORD | 719 EWR | 1197 MIA
15 MDW | 733 LGA | 1250 SLC
235 DTW | 740 JFK | 1440 PHX
334 MSP | 801 DFW | 1514 LAS
588 IAD | 867 BOS | 1721 SEA
599 CLT | 888 DEN | 1723 SAN
606 ATL | 925 IAH | 1739 PDX
612 DCA | 1005 MCO | 1744 LAX
621 BWI | 1011 TPA | 1846 SFO
678 PHL | 1182 FLL

My question is if airlines can make a better profit from flying small jets, at what point does the public utility have a right to exert constraints?

Ivanpah airport is going to cost billions of dollars and it is likely to be the biggest white elephant ever built in the USA. No airlines will willingly land at Ivanpah and compete with another airport that lands at McCarran. It will be a repeat of the Montreal debacle all over again.

Restricting jet operations to jets with 150 seats or more will be painful, but it may buy decades of additional usefulness at McCarran.

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

If they built Ivanpah, McCarran would close like DEN did.

That is the logical way to expand airport capability. You simply close the old one. When HKG built the new airport, they resisted lobbying to keep the old airport open for regional jets. But we all know what happened with Southwest airline and DFW.

Nobody, is talking of closing McCarran. Everybody talks about McCarran being supplemented by Ivanpah.

Frankly, I think McCarran is so important to Southwest Airlines that if they did try to close it, WN would sue for the right to purchase the airport and let it be operated as a private airport. I think they would win the lawsuit.

If you think that is impossible, keep in mind that just over a decade ago Chicago tried to sell MDW airport.
https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent ... ntext=jalc
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/us/0 ... e=REGIWALL

MIflyer12 wrote:

If you want an unregulated market you need to have a competitive market. That means three or more carriers non-stop on major city pairs like CHI-NYC; ideally airport pairs because, as an example, people will argue that ORD-EWR is vastly more convenient than MDW-LGA for some segment of the traveling population. It means multiple one-stop carriers to smaller metros and between smaller metros. Example: PWM (number 91 in domestic passengers) - IND (number 46 in domestic passengers) can be served PWM-DTW-IND, PWM-EWR-IND, PWM-LGA-IND, PWM-PHL-IND... With hub traffic even a small city pair like PWM-IND can see constructed maybe twenty itineraries a day that are reasonably time efficient, and competition by three carriers on a pair that would be very, very unlikely for even a single non-stop.

Now, if you want to argue that LGA and EWR are really busy and should never see anything with fewer than 150 seats you will:

- utterly crush non-stop services from many hubs to these number 50 and smaller airports (Check FSDan's work on the number of RJs out of LGA/EWR/ORD/CLT, etc., and then look at hub carrier route maps and aircraft assignments.)

- crush the connectivity between small markets (I think my PWM-IND example of 20 itins gets reduced to a single DL MD-90 PWM-ATL + DL MD-88 ATL-IND)

- thus have longer connection times, diminishing the value of flying at all

- greatly reduce the number of carriers competing on many, many airport pairs/city pairs, likely allowing prices to rise significantly

You just killed domestic aviation in a misguided attempt to make it marginally more time efficient (via less congestion at a few airports but with an unknown efficiency loss from killing RJ non-stops). How often did knowledgeable people espouse the virtues of Soviet planning?

very few USA Airports have been built brand new since de-regulation DIA is the only one I can think of off the top of my head,, building an airport with what we know today? They would have been built with a completely different mindset, To reinvent the wheel is pretty near impossible as the public outlay woud be unthinkable.. I do nOT THINK you've calculated the costs nor the benefits of de-regulating the airlines, AND? Were we volunteering your Money? You might have a conniption FIT!!

PacoMartin wrote:

Ranking Aircraft types by the number of domestic operations in the USA we get 8 types are responsible for 2/3 of the seats in commercial operations. Four of these types are regional jets and four are single aisle jets (no surprises as they are B737, B738, A320, and A321).

Roughly 44% of the nation lives in one of the 42 urban areas with population over 1 million. So it is reasonable to say that almost half the country would not have local commercial aviation without regional jets. My own urban area (Ranked #61) has daily Boeing 717 service, between 2 or 3 Allegiant jets (A319-A320) and the rest regional jets....

....But what about airports with severely constrained runways? Would it be proper to give them the right to ban certain types of jets? Bans could extend not just to regional jets but even to smaller single aisle jets with fewer than 150 seats that were more popular more than a decade ago like B737-700, A319, and B717 and MD88.

In 2000, SFO prepared to tackle this issue when it launched a nascent effort to restrict the operations of the sub-35 seat category through rulemaking under a subpart of F.A.R. Part 161. The subsequent events of 2001 intervened in the process.

Unfortunately don't recall the minute details....do recall airlines & industry trades were gearing to intervene. Would've been an interesting case study had it proceeded to an outcome.

Is McCarran capacity limited? I don’t think so as I’ve never been restricted in a bizjet. It’s NOT the size or number of planes, it’s runway capacity and with LAS weather and runway layout, that’s rare

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Is McCarran capacity limited? I don’t think so as I’ve never been restricted in a bizjet. It’s NOT the size or number of planes, it’s runway capacity and with LAS weather and runway layout, that’s rare

Legislation was signed on October 28, 2000, allowing Clark County to purchase land for a new commercial airport. The county was to buy 6,500 acres of land in the Ivanpah Valley from the Bureau of Land Management, about 30 miles southwest of McCarran International Airport (opened to airline flights in 1948) for the Ivanpah Airport. The location is between the towns of Jean and Primm. Construction was to begin when McCarran reached 90% (49.5 million passengers) of its projected capacity of 55 million passengers. McCarran reached 49.7 million passengers in 2018. At the time of the land purchase it was believed that McCarran would reach that level in nine years.

Is McCarran capacity limited? Well Clark county certainly believed so when they bought the land 19 years ago.


Denver International Airport opened on February 28, 1995. It was 17.9 driving miles from the old Stapleton airport or 13.2 air miles. So the distance from Ivanpah Airport to McCarran Airport is nearly double that of the Denver airports.

Stapleton was 4,700 acres while LAS covers 2,800 acres. Needless to say there was a very vocal group in the mid 1990s that wanted to keep Stapleton open (if only for regional jets) to save people driving the extra 18 miles.

McCarran % domestic traffic (12 months ending July 2019
39.14% Southwest
10.82% Spirit
9.66% American
9.44% Delta
8.94% United
22.00% Other

36.83% Southwest % domestic traffic (12 months ending Dec 2006)
1982 was the year southwest established operations at Las Vegas, and it is now there #3 airport by number of daily departures (206 per day).

Terminal 1 - T1 has roughly 2/3 of the domestic traffic
Allegiant A Gates
Spirit A, B Gates
Southwest B, C Gates
Contour D Gates
American D Gates
Delta D Gates

Terminal 3 - T3 domestic airlines
United D Gates
Alaska E Gates
Frontier D Gates
Hawaiian D Gates
JetBlue E Gates
Sun Country D Gates
Omni E Gates

Ivanpah is planned as a "relief airport" and not a "replacement airport", but any attempt by the Clark County Department of Aviation to shut down McCarran would probably be met by a lawsuit from Southwest Airlines to force the agency to sell the publicly owned airport as a private airport.

What "runway constrained" airports did you have in mind?

McCarran has been brought up in this thread and you mentioned LAS is past 49.5M passengers putting it within 10% of it's designed 55M pax capacity. Correct me if I am wrong but I do not believe the airport is runway constrained. Rather, the terminals do not have enough gates and space to accommodate the demand.

bluejuice wrote:

Correct me if I am wrong but I do not believe the airport is runway constrained. Rather, the terminals do not have enough gates and space to accommodate the demand.

I think you are wrong. The runways cross each other which makes them of limited usage.

While McCarran does have more passengers per gate than SFO, SAN or PHX it has far less than LAX. Terminal 1 East at San Diego (Southwest gates) are very crowded.

Passengers per day per gate in 2018
1817 LAX
1391 LAS
1377 SFO
1302 SAN (Terminal 1 East gates are used 4X as much as airport as a whole)
1061 PHX

“We feel with the type of aircraft that we have coming in and out today that we could sustain 60 million (passengers) without any delay factor, without any big obstruction to the operation,” - County Aviation Director Rosemary Vassiliadis. I note that they are projecting constraints at 60 MAP instead of 55 MAP which was the working number in the year 2000.

PacoMartin wrote:

bluejuice wrote:

Correct me if I am wrong but I do not believe the airport is runway constrained. Rather, the terminals do not have enough gates and space to accommodate the demand.

I think you are wrong. The runways cross each other which makes them of limited usage.

While McCarran does have more passengers per gate than SFO, SAN or PHX it has far less than LAX. Terminal 1 East at San Diego (Southwest gates) are very crowded.

Passengers per day per gate in 2018
1817 LAX
1391 LAS
1377 SFO
1302 SAN (Terminal 1 East gates are used 4X as much as airport as a whole)
1061 PHX

“We feel with the type of aircraft that we have coming in and out today that we could sustain 60 million (passengers) without any delay factor, without any big obstruction to the operation,” - County Aviation Director Rosemary Vassiliadis. I note that they are projecting constraints at 60 MAP instead of 55 MAP which was the working number in the year 2000.

I don't mean to sound like a jerk as questions online do not always convey tone. Do you believe I am wrong or do you know I am wrong? The quote you have provided leads me to believe the runways are not the bottleneck. If the current maximum capacity is 55 million passengers and airport administration believes they can do 60 million with the same types of planes without obstructions, then there is sufficient runway capacity. Toss in new technologies like NextGen and the same runways can be better utilized. Also wondering what you mean by the runways being of limited usage because they cross. Overall I still would like to know what domestic US airports have runway constraints that would benefit from having restrictions on RJs and planes carrying less than 150 pax?

bluejuice wrote:

I don't mean to sound like a jerk as questions online do not always convey tone. Do you believe I am wrong or do you know I am wrong? The quote you have provided leads me to believe the runways are not the bottleneck. If the current maximum capacity is 55 million passengers and airport administration believes they can do 60 million with the same types of planes without obstructions, then there is sufficient runway capacity. Toss in new technologies like NextGen and the same runways can be better utilized. Also wondering what you mean by the runways being of limited usage because they cross.

I believe you are wrong but Iqan't inf it in writing. In the case of SAN airport, the Airport authority always made it pretty clear that it was the runway that was the ultimate constraint. I have never seen something that clear in the case of McCarran. I checked how many passengers per gate at LAS to see if it was much higher than other airports in the southwest. It was slightly higher, but still significantly lower than LAX.

If it was the terminals that were the problem in Las Vegas, than the sensible thing would not be to procure land for a second runway, but to procure land for more terminals. Since Clark County bought land 30 miles away for a runway, I must presume they acted reasonably intelligently.

Stapleton Airport in Denver had 6 runways, and they still built a new airport saying the old one was limited.

bluejuice wrote:

Overall I still would like to know what domestic US airports have runway constraints that would benefit from having restrictions on RJs and planes carrying less than 150 pax?

San Diego Airport ran a massive public relations campaign in the 2004-2006 campaign to say that the biggest limitation on growth at that airport was the single runway which could only handle 260,000 to 300,000 operations per year before severe constraints needed to be applied to operations that would cost the County tens of billions of dollars in GDP.

They also stated that the 640 acres would cause some problems in the future, but the limited acreage was not the central issue.

If SAN had an average number of seats the same as RSW (166 seats) and we assume an 82% load factor than SAN airport could carry 35.4 million to 40.1 million passengers in 260,000 to 300,000 operations. As SAN carried 24 million passengers in 2018, the airport might last several decades longer.

I wouldn't want to do anything in a big hurry. Possibly restrict private and RJs in three years at SAN, and ban planes with less than 150 seats in six years to give the airlines time to prepare.

I expect that if USA airlines begin ordering thousands of A220s we will quickly develop a crisis.

PacoMartin wrote:

I expect that if USA airlines begin ordering thousands of A220s we will quickly develop a crisis.

Not if those airlines are simply replacing ERJs and CRJs with A220s

PacoMartin wrote:

Ivanpah is planned as a "relief airport" and not a "replacement airport", but any attempt by the Clark County Department of Aviation to shut down McCarran would probably be met by a lawsuit from Southwest Airlines to force the agency to sell the publicly owned airport as a private airport.

Well, if they want WN to move to Ivanpah all they have to do is to ensure that Ivanpah has lower operating cost than McCarran and see how fast a split operation starts with the ultimate goal of moving over. As with most things, follow the money, if the new airport has higher or similar cost, force will be required, in which case, it will be a relief airport for who?

par13del wrote:

Well, if they want WN to move to Ivanpah all they have to do is to ensure that Ivanpah has lower operating cost than McCarran and see how fast a split operation starts with the ultimate goal of moving over. As with most things, follow the money, if the new airport has higher or similar cost, force will be required, in which case, it will be a relief airport for who?

Well that is a very easy statement to make, but very difficult to accomplish. It's like telling someone that in order to make money in the stock market buy low, and sell high. McCarran is already built. The only way to make Ivanpah cheaper is to subsidize Ivanpah with money collected at McCarran.

Read the story of Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (opened 1941) and Montréal-Mirabel International Airport (opened in 1975) 20 air miles away. The Canadian government spent three decades trying to make that situation work, but it never did and the government lost a fortune.

Southwest average aircraft stage length is 737 miles with 33% of passengers making a connection and the average passenger fare is $155.95
The cost and time of traveling 30 miles by land will be a significant percentage of that cost. There is not going to be any high speed rail for a long time.
Even if it is more expensive to operate at McCarran, passengers will prefer it, even if the fares are higher.

Personally, I don't see Ivanpah as a workable concept for passenger operations. It may make sense for cargo. If you close McCarran (like Denver closed Stapleton) than Ivanpah will work only because there is no alternative, but nobody is talking about closing McCarran

I am surprised there is so much resistance here. When highways are too crowded the first thing that cities do is create HOV lanes and reduced tolls to encourage people to rideshare. It seems so obvious.

Should be obvious planes ain’t cars. HOV lanes are complete waste of space, better to use the land to create more travel lanes for everyone. The HOV around here are mostly empty while backups abound in the travel lanes.

There’s no where near enough freight traffic to justify an airport.

PacoMartin wrote:

I am surprised there is so much resistance here. When highways are too crowded the first thing that cities do is create HOV lanes and reduced tolls to encourage people to rideshare. It seems so obvious.

This is way off topic, but that's hardly the first thing cities do when highways become too crowded. It's just one of a cascading series of things that happen when things are already way out of control.

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Should be obvious planes ain’t cars. HOV lanes are complete waste of space, better to use the land to create more travel lanes for everyone. The HOV around here are mostly empty while backups abound in the travel lanes.

OK, you suggest something. I'll give you the parameters.
SAN airport is at 225,000 operations on it's single runway airport in 2018. That is 86.5% of the 260,000 annual operation threshold where constraints will be necessary. They had 24 Million air passengers in 2018, and the count went up by a million from 2017.

Here is the breakdown of jet size (by seats) for both domestic and international flights at SAN Diego.
3.4% seats on jet types that average more than 200 seats
18.7% seats on jet types that average more than 180 seats
55.9% seats on jet types that average more than 150 seats
87.6% seats on jet types that average more than 140 seats *
91.8% seats on jet types that average more than 80 seats
99.8% seats on jet types that average more than 60 seats

* B737-700 with 143 seats flown by Southwest Airlines is the most popular type of aircraft at SAN airport

So banning all aircraft with less than 80 seats will only have limited effect. Bannling all aircraft with less than 150 seats will have a major effect, but you would have to give a minimum of seven years notice for airlines to make that kind of adjustment in their schedule.

The alternative is "slot control" which has the effect of upsizing aircraft anyway.

Voters have rejected the recommendation of the SDAA committee to try and petition Congress to coerce the military to share Miramar with a civilian airport (which would involve relocating interstate highways). The committee rejected any other location in which to build a new airport.

Building a USA side entrance to Tijuana Airport has reduced traffic at SAN by less than 1%. SAN airport still has flights to SJD and PVR, but all other nonstops to Mexico are now out of TIJ. TIJ now attracts people from other counties in SoCal besides San Diego county.

PacoMartin wrote:

par13del wrote:

Well, if they want WN to move to Ivanpah all they have to do is to ensure that Ivanpah has lower operating cost than McCarran and see how fast a split operation starts with the ultimate goal of moving over. As with most things, follow the money, if the new airport has higher or similar cost, force will be required, in which case, it will be a relief airport for who?

Well that is a very easy statement to make, but very difficult to accomplish. It's like telling someone that in order to make money in the stock market buy low, and sell high. McCarran is already built. The only way to make Ivanpah cheaper is to subsidize Ivanpah with money collected at McCarran.

Read the story of Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (opened 1941) and Montréal-Mirabel International Airport (opened in 1975) 20 air miles away. The Canadian government spent three decades trying to make that situation work, but it never did and the government lost a fortune.

Southwest average aircraft stage length is 737 miles with 33% of passengers making a connection and the average passenger fare is $155.95
The cost and time of traveling 30 miles by land will be a significant percentage of that cost. There is not going to be any high speed rail for a long time.
Even if it is more expensive to operate at McCarran, passengers will prefer it, even if the fares are higher.

Personally, I don't see Ivanpah as a workable concept for passenger operations. It may make sense for cargo. If you close McCarran (like Denver closed Stapleton) than Ivanpah will work only because there is no alternative, but nobody is talking about closing McCarran

The market will eventually rationalize on money.

Cargo separated from passenger dies to belly cargo. Ivanpah is too far out. It would be another Mirabel where long haul and cargo, starved of narrowbody feed, died.

What is needed is more runways and good ground transit. I would love to see SAN expanded, but the only way to do that is destroy jobs en mass and probably move too much

Slots do upgauge, but they also result in ORD where AA and US protect slits with RJs.

There is no easy answer unless expansion is viable (SFO, OAK, limited but significant at LAX/ONT, IAD, DEN, ISD, SLC, pretty much every Florida and Texas airport). Business will just have to move to growth potential.

RJs have a purpose. They are declining, but not going away. For example, my sister lives in a city that has lost RJ access to LAX. Bummer. Only RJ to SLC, DEN, and DFW. The slot at LAX was worth more for a larger aircraft to somewhere else.


Why aren't we looking for growth? Grow or you rot. Another committee to allocate resources works until business goes elsewhere.

We need more runways in the USA. Those airports/cities will have easy growth. Constrained cities will not.

Lightsaber

Slot restrictions would seem to be a far better management option for an airport facing airfield constraints than arbitrarily banning aircraft of a certain size.

exFWAOONW wrote:

This idea stinks of elitism. If you’re not in this group, you don’t deserve to fly (here).

Some does stink yes. But at the same time some carriers operate a huge number of daily flights all on RJ's for hourly or every 30 min/ We don't need that many flights "for conncetion" needs. They could use larger planes and open up new markets.

lightsaber wrote:

RJs have a purpose. They are declining, but not going away. For example, my sister lives in a city that has lost RJ access to LAX. Bummer. Only RJ to SLC, DEN, and DFW. The slot at LAX was worth more for a larger aircraft to somewhere else.


Why aren't we looking for growth? Grow or you rot. Another committee to allocate resources works until business goes elsewhere.

We need more runways in the USA. Those airports/cities will have easy growth. Constrained cities will not.

Lightsaber

I am not campaigning against RJ. At my home airport , 55% of the seats are on RJs.

I am saying that some airports simply cannot keep expanding, and a reasonable solution is to ban smaller size jets.

Not that a small jet ban won't cquse some loss. Even if you ban RJs at SAN you would lose certain destinations like Monterey, California, or Boise, Idaho.

PacoMartin wrote:

lightsaber wrote:

RJs have a purpose. They are declining, but not going away. For example, my sister lives in a city that has lost RJ access to LAX. Bummer. Only RJ to SLC, DEN, and DFW. The slot at LAX was worth more for a larger aircraft to somewhere else.


Why aren't we looking for growth? Grow or you rot. Another committee to allocate resources works until business goes elsewhere.

We need more runways in the USA. Those airports/cities will have easy growth. Constrained cities will not.

Lightsaber

I am not campaigning against RJ. At my home airport , 55% of the seats are on RJs.

I am saying that some airports simply cannot keep expanding, and a reasonable solution is to ban smaller size jets.

Not that a small jet ban won't cquse some loss. Even if you ban RJs at SAN you would lose certain destinations like Monterey, California, or Boise, Idaho.

Why would you do this when you could just do slots?

There are a ton of traffic management options out there that are much more flexible (and likely more effective) than trying to ban regional jets.

PacoMartin wrote:

bluejuice wrote:

I don't mean to sound like a jerk as questions online do not always convey tone. Do you believe I am wrong or do you know I am wrong? The quote you have provided leads me to believe the runways are not the bottleneck. If the current maximum capacity is 55 million passengers and airport administration believes they can do 60 million with the same types of planes without obstructions, then there is sufficient runway capacity. Toss in new technologies like NextGen and the same runways can be better utilized. Also wondering what you mean by the runways being of limited usage because they cross.

I believe you are wrong but Iqan't inf it in writing. In the case of SAN airport, the Airport authority always made it pretty clear that it was the runway that was the ultimate constraint. I have never seen something that clear in the case of McCarran. I checked how many passengers per gate at LAS to see if it was much higher than other airports in the southwest. It was slightly higher, but still significantly lower than LAX.

If it was the terminals that were the problem in Las Vegas, than the sensible thing would not be to procure land for a second runway, but to procure land for more terminals. Since Clark County bought land 30 miles away for a runway, I must presume they acted reasonably intelligently.

Stapleton Airport in Denver had 6 runways, and they still built a new airport saying the old one was limited.

bluejuice wrote:

Overall I still would like to know what domestic US airports have runway constraints that would benefit from having restrictions on RJs and planes carrying less than 150 pax?

San Diego Airport ran a massive public relations campaign in the 2004-2006 campaign to say that the biggest limitation on growth at that airport was the single runway which could only handle 260,000 to 300,000 operations per year before severe constraints needed to be applied to operations that would cost the County tens of billions of dollars in GDP.

They also stated that the 640 acres would cause some problems in the future, but the limited acreage was not the central issue.

If SAN had an average number of seats the same as RSW (166 seats) and we assume an 82% load factor than SAN airport could carry 35.4 million to 40.1 million passengers in 260,000 to 300,000 operations. As SAN carried 24 million passengers in 2018, the airport might last several decades longer.

I wouldn't want to do anything in a big hurry. Possibly restrict private and RJs in three years at SAN, and ban planes with less than 150 seats in six years to give the airlines time to prepare.

I expect that if USA airlines begin ordering thousands of A220s we will quickly develop a crisis.

The problem with Stapleton wasn’t the number of runways on the field, but the number of runways that could be utilized in poor weather. The runways were too close to allow simultaneous approaches in low visibility; a problem that SFO (for example) still suffers and will continue to suffer from until another runway is built in the bay...which will probably never happen. DIA was built to allow triple simultaneous approaches in poor weather (you could even run 4 if the winds weren’t too strong) which stopped the massive delays that were happening in poor weather.

I find it interesting to further the comparison with SFO, which continues to build nice terminals but doesn’t ever do anything to address the real problem with the airfield which is runway layout.

blockski wrote:

Slot restrictions would seem to be a far better management option for an airport facing airfield constraints than arbitrarily banning aircraft of a certain size.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) uses runway slots to limit scheduled air traffic at certain capacity constrained airports. In the U.S., those airports are John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), LaGuardia Airport (LGA), and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA). In addition, the FAA monitors scheduled air traffic demand at other airports and has a formal schedule review and approval process at several airports. Those airports are Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), and San Francisco International Airport (SFO).


SAN is a little different than JFK, DCA, LGA, ORD, LAX, EWR, SFO. The only domestic widebody at SAN is from Honolulu and Hawaiian Airlines has announced that will be downsized to an A321neo in January 2020. Widebodies are flown by British Airways, Lufthansa, and Japan Air Lines.

Then you have a handful of regional jets flown by Compass Airlines, Horizon Air, SkyWest Airlines Inc., and Jazz Aviation.

Bidding for slots will encourage airlines to up-gauge to larger narrow body jets, but very inefficiently. Right now Southwest Airlines flies 3.4 B737-700 with 143 seats for every B737-800 with 175 seats. WN flies 40% of the seats from SAN.

BTW I am not so naive as to think that banning certain types of jets is prohibited by some FAA regulation. I am just saying that it would be very efficient way of preserving the viability of SAN airport.

PacoMartin wrote:

Ranking Aircraft types by the number of domestic operations in the USA we get 8 types are responsible for 2/3 of the seats in commercial operations. Four of these types are regional jets and four are single aisle jets (no surprises as they are B737, B738, A320, and A321).

Roughly 44% of the nation lives in one of the 42 urban areas with population over 1 million. So it is reasonable to say that almost half the country would not have local commercial aviation without regional jets. My own urban area (Ranked #61) has daily Boeing 717 service, between 2 or 3 Allegiant jets (A319-A320) and the rest regional jets.

But what about airports with severely constrained runways? Would it be proper to give them the right to ban certain types of jets? Bans could extend not just to regional jets but even to smaller single aisle jets with fewer than 150 seats that were more popular more than a decade ago like B737-700, A319, and B717 and MD88.

An airport can’t dictate aircraft size. Banning certain aircraft is an artificial barrier that violates equal protection under interstate commerce. The limiting factor can only be a physical limitation that prevents an aircraft from operating (i.e. wingspan or weight limitation), an aircraft phase out over noise once a federal phase out is established (like Stage 2 noise) or available runway capacity that will get slot coordinated by the FAA to offset capacity overflow. Some curfews are grandfathered and therefore those airports already have an artificial barrier that is allowed to remain, but cannot be altered to further limit an airport. You can be allowed to implement a less restrictive curfew like a Orange County did a few years back. Gate caps, aircraft banning, ops caps by an airport are all artificial barriers. The only kind of artificial restriction today can come from congressional action as was done at Love Field in exchange for repeal of the Wright Amendment. Getting that somewhere else has a snowballs chance in hell of happening.

Also, sub 70 seat jets are effectively dead (save the silly 50 seater out of converted CR7s) and no one in the US has ordered a prop in close to a decade. If your market can’t support a 70 seater, the likelihood of service will be low in the long term.

PacoMartin wrote:

blockski wrote:

Slot restrictions would seem to be a far better management option for an airport facing airfield constraints than arbitrarily banning aircraft of a certain size.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) uses runway slots to limit scheduled air traffic at certain capacity constrained airports. In the U.S., those airports are John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), LaGuardia Airport (LGA), and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA). In addition, the FAA monitors scheduled air traffic demand at other airports and has a formal schedule review and approval process at several airports. Those airports are Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), and San Francisco International Airport (SFO).


SAN is a little different than JFK, DCA, LGA, ORD, LAX, EWR, SFO. The only domestic widebody at SAN is from Honolulu and Hawaiian Airlines has announced that will be downsized to an A321neo in January 2020. Widebodies are flown by British Airways, Lufthansa, and Japan Air Lines.

Then you have a handful of regional jets flown by Compass Airlines, Horizon Air, SkyWest Airlines Inc., and Jazz Aviation.

Bidding for slots will encourage airlines to up-gauge to larger narrow body jets, but very inefficiently. Right now Southwest Airlines flies 3.4 B737-700 with 143 seats for every B737-800 with 175 seats. WN flies 40% of the seats from SAN.

BTW I am not so naive as to think that banning certain types of jets is prohibited by some FAA regulation. I am just saying that it would be very efficient way of preserving the viability of SAN airport.

Bidding will do nothing of the sort. As with a curfew, pricing of slots is a grandfathered process. Slot management is an FAA process in terms of ATC demand management so SAN will get slotted and airlines can either operate smaller aircraft and charge a premium or up gauge. It will be their choice. As I noted in a previous thread, a 70 seat jet today will be a larger plane in the future. Just as 30 seaters 20 years ago are 70 seaters today. Aircraft capacity growth is an organic process when left alone. Domestic widebody use has been nullified with the growth in narrowbody size in the 737/A320 families. You just don’t need domestic wides like they used to. It’s why the 787-3 and 767 died on the vine.

aaway wrote:

PacoMartin wrote:

Ranking Aircraft types by the number of domestic operations in the USA we get 8 types are responsible for 2/3 of the seats in commercial operations. Four of these types are regional jets and four are single aisle jets (no surprises as they are B737, B738, A320, and A321).

Roughly 44% of the nation lives in one of the 42 urban areas with population over 1 million. So it is reasonable to say that almost half the country would not have local commercial aviation without regional jets. My own urban area (Ranked #61) has daily Boeing 717 service, between 2 or 3 Allegiant jets (A319-A320) and the rest regional jets....

....But what about airports with severely constrained runways? Would it be proper to give them the right to ban certain types of jets? Bans could extend not just to regional jets but even to smaller single aisle jets with fewer than 150 seats that were more popular more than a decade ago like B737-700, A319, and B717 and MD88.

In 2000, SFO prepared to tackle this issue when it launched a nascent effort to restrict the operations of the sub-35 seat category through rulemaking under a subpart of F.A.R. Part 161. The subsequent events of 2001 intervened in the process.

Unfortunately don't recall the minute details....do recall airlines & industry trades were gearing to intervene. Would've been an interesting case study had it proceeded to an outcome.

They would have been trashed by the case law precedent set by Western v Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Restrictions like that would only be allowed if the City of a San Francisco had another airport under their control that could take the smaller aircraft. The only reason La Guardia and DC get away with a perimeter rule is the fact that they control multiple airports which means they aren’t banning carriers from all the airports they control, just certain ones. The same applied to the restrictions Chicago used for a time as they also had Midway under their control. This was a driver for LAWA to have Ontario under their control to relieve LAX. It will be interesting to see if La Guardia will lift the perimeter rule with the new layout they are developing for the terminals that will alleviate airfield congestion coupled with the reduction in available sub 70 seat aircraft. They should.

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/di ... 2/2362360/

JayinKitsap wrote:

DiamondFlyer wrote:

JayinKitsap wrote:

The purchase of slots and the fee per landing is the best tools for an airport to manage its traffic. The first step with this is removing the general aviation from the airport.

The percentages noted in the OP seen odd, how does the Q400 have 95% of anything

Public use airports are open to all of the public, including GA. You can’t just ban GA from an airport in the US

Quite true, but charging a high landing fee for all aircraft does move a lot of GA flights, that is really the only remedy they have.

Probably not viable. You’d be attempting to price an operator out of an airport which is discriminatory by nature.

PacoMartin wrote:

bluejuice wrote:

Correct me if I am wrong but I do not believe the airport is runway constrained. Rather, the terminals do not have enough gates and space to accommodate the demand.

I think you are wrong. The runways cross each other which makes them of limited usage.

While McCarran does have more passengers per gate than SFO, SAN or PHX it has far less than LAX. Terminal 1 East at San Diego (Southwest gates) are very crowded.

Passengers per day per gate in 2018
1817 LAX
1391 LAS
1377 SFO
1302 SAN (Terminal 1 East gates are used 4X as much as airport as a whole)
1061 PHX

“We feel with the type of aircraft that we have coming in and out today that we could sustain 60 million (passengers) without any delay factor, without any big obstruction to the operation,” - County Aviation Director Rosemary Vassiliadis. I note that they are projecting constraints at 60 MAP instead of 55 MAP which was the working number in the year 2000.

SFO and LAS have similar throughput, but Vegas doesn’t get hammered with fog. Hot day weight penalties is a different matter. Vegas has 92 gates today and could support about 120 with their airfield configuration.

DL717 wrote:

Aircraft capacity growth is an organic process when left alone.

No doubt you are correct. As domestic traffic increases the average number of seats per jet will probably increase. Look at the extreme popularity of the MAX-8 vs the MAX-7 while the B737-700 had fairly high sales.

Domestic pax
2002 551,899,643 Percent
2003 583,293,766 5.7%
2004 629,769,616 8.0%
2005 657,261,487 4.4%
2006 658,362,620 0.2%
2007 679,185,450 3.2%
2008 651,710,182 -4.0%
2009 618,067,255 -5.2%
2010 629,537,593 1.9%
2011 638,247,667 1.4%
2012 642,289,482 0.6%
2013 645,677,554 0.5%
2014 662,826,955 2.7%
2015 696,016,894 5.0%
2016 719,996,828 3.4%
2017 741,735,098 3.0%
2018 777,972,797 4.9%

The problem with vegetative growth is that it takes many decades to make a profound difference. Airports like San Diego may not have that much time.

Southwest owns 2.46 B737-700s to ever B737-800. But looking at the flights out of SAN airport they fy 3.41 -700s for every -800. It might take 20 years until they fly mostly -800s out of SAN.

exFWAOONW wrote:

This idea stinks of elitism. If you’re not in this group, you don’t deserve to fly (here).

Small jets can be very elitist. They permit nonstops from San Diego to places like Monterey, Boise, Hayden CO (ski resort) and private jets fly from San Diego to the big island of Hawaii.

I don't see a restriction on jet size to be any more inherently elitist as a perimeter restriction or slot controls.

They are simply ways to control the use of an airport.

PacoMartin wrote:

DL717 wrote:

Aircraft capacity growth is an organic process when left alone.

No doubt you are correct. As domestic traffic increases the average number of seats per jet will probably increase. Look at the extreme popularity of the MAX-8 vs the MAX-7 while the B737-700 had fairly high sales.

Domestic pax
2002 551,899,643 Percent
2003 583,293,766 5.7%
2004 629,769,616 8.0%
2005 657,261,487 4.4%
2006 658,362,620 0.2%
2007 679,185,450 3.2%
2008 651,710,182 -4.0%
2009 618,067,255 -5.2%
2010 629,537,593 1.9%
2011 638,247,667 1.4%
2012 642,289,482 0.6%
2013 645,677,554 0.5%
2014 662,826,955 2.7%
2015 696,016,894 5.0%
2016 719,996,828 3.4%
2017 741,735,098 3.0%
2018 777,972,797 4.9%

The problem with vegetative growth is that it takes many decades to make a profound difference. Airports like San Diego may not have that much time.

Southwest owns 2.46 B737-700s to ever B737-800. But looking at the flights out of SAN airport they fy 3.41 -700s for every -800. It might take 20 years until they fly mostly -800s out of SAN.

Faster. Southwest only has 30 -7MAX orders and 280 -8MAX orders with 34 delivered. 700/-7 will be used for smaller markets, 800/-8 for mature markets with the same frequency. Wouldn’t be surprised to see a -9 or -10 order from them in the not to distant future.

San Diego International Airport at Lindbergh Field is rapidly approaching its maximum capacity for passengers and operations. Annual passenger capacity is 18.7 million to 25.6 million passengers. More than 17.4 million passengers enplaned in 2005. Based on projected growth rates in passenger service, the airport could reach maximum passenger capacity as early as 2011. In 2005, there were 220,210 aircraft operations (take-offs and landings). At 260,000 annual operations (anticipated to occur between 2015 and 2022), runway capacity will begin to constrain growth in air traffic. At 300,000 annual operations (anticipated to occur between 2021 and 2030), runway congestion will block any further growth.

The above comment was posted in 2006 right before the county wide vote on the airport in November. Passengers were up to 24 million in 2018., but in 2018 there were only 225,000 aircraft operations.

According to some old statistics less than 4% of domestic passengers at SAN are connecting. The number of widebodies are almostl limited to foreign carriers flyiing to Japan or Europe. Hawaiian Airlines still has a widebody A330 from HNL, but it is to be replaced with an A321neo in January 2020. Delta sometimes flies a B767 from Atlanta.

Nearly 40% of the seats are flying less than 500 miles to northern California, southern California, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.

On very rare occasions Delta flies a 110 seat B717 from LAX to SAN, but usually the route is covered by regional jets with 50, 70, and 76 seats (between 11 and 12 times a day). Back when the county was taking the 2006 votes there were 25 round trips a day, often with turboprops. Regional jets now fly as far as STL