Moderators: richierich, ua900, PanAm_DC10, hOMSaR
deltairlines wrote:It might be different due to Covid this year, but men's and women's basketball and football are really the only three sports that regularly do charters. Most other sports will just fly commercial if they need to travel by air (and in a lot of cases, it needs to be an 8+ hour drive to consider flying).
Basketball and football are the sports that drive the revenue, so they get the nice things like charters. Sure, there are some programs in the other sports that do make money (NCAA baseball has definitely closed the gap with some of the big programs in the past decade), but that's few and far between.
jco613 wrote:Here is our night list of SAT arrivals.
SY 738 - PVU-SAT Either BYU or Utah Valley https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SCX8647/history/20210316/2130Z/KPVU/KSAT
G4 A320 - ATL-SAT carrying Georgia Tech https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAY4021/history/20210316/2033Z/KATL/KSAT
SY 738 - SUX-SAT I'm stumped by this one. The closest team I could find was South Dakota State, but they are closer to FSD...so if they had to drive that far, it SUX! https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SCX8626/history/20210316/2045Z/KSUX/KSAT
SY 738 - BNA-SAT is taking Belmont down to Texas https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SCX8603/history/20210316/2015Z/KBNA/KSAT
I want to correct the previous post. The 3rd charter should read GSO - My apologies.
Here is the other 16 seed - High Point
WQ 734 GSO-SAT https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SWQ132/history/20210316/1900Z/KGSO/KSAT
SY 738 JAN-SAT took Jackson State on a short flight down to the Alamo https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SCX8615/history/20210316/2025Z/KJAN/KSAT
ANOTHER MYSTERY WQ 734 ELP-SAT - there's no teams anywhere near there!!! https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SWQ3564/history/20210316/1900Z/KELP/KSAT
G4 319 BWI-SAT takes Mount St. Mary's to play against Maryland...in Texas https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAY4204/history/20210316/2000Z/KBWI/KSAT
G4 319 PIA-SAT has Bradley on board https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAY4212/history/20210316/2059Z/KPIA/KSAT
G4 320 ABE-SAT taking Lehigh down from the Lehigh Valley https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAY4215/history/20210316/2200Z/KABE/KSAT
wjcandee wrote:I concur that this is a fun thread so far.
For the sake of the players and their families, I am glad to see so many charters being operated by Sun Country and Allegiant. If I were a parent, and knew something about the biz, I would just feel better with my kids on these strong Part 121 carriers. Allegiant cut back on charters a few years ago. With Covid, I guess that they and Sun Country have the available equipment and crews, and this is a nice side benefit for the teams.
That said, we all know that the right crew was driving that USA Jet basketball charter a couple of years ago, which but for the highly-experienced and decisive captain at the controls, who had the guts to abort immediately despite being above V1. Had he not been driving, and the CheckAirman flying in the right seat not honored his decision, that flight certainly would have ended very badly.
gdavis003 wrote:wjcandee wrote:I concur that this is a fun thread so far.
For the sake of the players and their families, I am glad to see so many charters being operated by Sun Country and Allegiant. If I were a parent, and knew something about the biz, I would just feel better with my kids on these strong Part 121 carriers. Allegiant cut back on charters a few years ago. With Covid, I guess that they and Sun Country have the available equipment and crews, and this is a nice side benefit for the teams.
That said, we all know that the right crew was driving that USA Jet basketball charter a couple of years ago, which but for the highly-experienced and decisive captain at the controls, who had the guts to abort immediately despite being above V1. Had he not been driving, and the CheckAirman flying in the right seat not honored his decision, that flight certainly would have ended very badly.
Agreed. Allegiant certainly benefited from the Miami Air collapse with respect to the NCAA charters. For the tournament, NCAA contracts with three carriers (was Swift, Sun Country, Miami Air but Allegiant has filled the void) for the teams to book through their travel agency, and the NCAA of course pays for their tournament trips. Usually, there's a few teams that will take DL or someone else that they usually fly, but even those teams have used the three NCAA carriers for this year, presumably because of the unique set-up for this year. Looks like they have just been dropping a team off in IND/SAT, picking up another, etc. It's certainly fun for the teams that don't fly for every game to fly to the tournament. Nice to see Allegiant back in the sports charter world for the NCAA for the postseason this year.
jco613 wrote:WQ 734 EWR-SAT I do not have a matching school for this one...https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SWQ144/history/20210317/1400Z/KEWR/KSAT
jco613 wrote:WQ 734 INT-SAT not sure on this one as by my count High Point and Wake Forest were accounted for...https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SWQ142/history/20210317/1300Z/KINT/KSAT
gdavis003 wrote:Certainly enjoyed reading through today! Seemingly much more busy than IND, as much less teams were in driving distance of SAT. Teams also coming from their homes as opposed to from the conference tourneys so much easier to decipher for the most part, which is nice.jco613 wrote:WQ 734 EWR-SAT I do not have a matching school for this one...https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SWQ144/history/20210317/1400Z/KEWR/KSAT
Would presume that this is Rutgers. They tend to use EWR.jco613 wrote:WQ 734 INT-SAT not sure on this one as by my count High Point and Wake Forest were accounted for...https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SWQ142/history/20210317/1300Z/KINT/KSAT
I think North Carolina A&T probably was one of the GSO flights. I would venture to say that INT was Wake Forest, and the other two out of GSO were High Point and NC A&T.
wjcandee wrote:My impression was that Allegiant didn't "benefit" from the Miami Air shutdown, but rather Covid caused it to increase the number of flights it was willing to run as charters. Allegiant was a big provider several years ago, and intentionally, to my recollection, cut way back on sports charters when it was having pilot and equipment availability issues when retraining folks for the Busses while dumping MD80s as quick as they could. They didn't have the slack, and they pulled back on charters. I think I read an article -- maybe even in the NY Times one year -- how the coaches were bitching up a storm about their teams having to wait for flights home after a loss, and the NCAA blamed it on the significant reduction in charter availability due to Allegiant pulling out. They were using folks like Kaiser (cool company) as much as they could, but still couldn't give the service that the coaches thought their teams were entitled to. (But my memory plays tricks on me from time to time, and for all I know I could be thinking of Southwest or someone else.)
It's also cool to look at the aircraft routings. I didn't do more than a sample, but WQ and SY seem to dedicate an aircraft to this for a day or so, and each makes 2-3 flights in a day to move the kids. G4 seems to take an aircraft from somewhere nearby, ferry in to the departure point, fly to SAT, drop the kids, and ferry straight to the origin of their next commercial flight and carry on. At least 3 that I looked at did this; no G4 aircraft I looked at stayed just on sports charter that day.
Also, interesting nearly-even distribution among iAero, Sunny and Allegiant. 10-each SY and G4, 9 WQ.
jco613 wrote:Looks like 3 of the 5 teams that flew in for the Women's Hockey tournament have exit plans...all on Endeavor
Boston College (CM8?) https://flightaware.com/live/flight/EDV5587/history/20210319/1410Z/KERI/KBOS
Minnesota Duluth https://flightaware.com/live/flight/EDV5585/history/20210319/1410Z/KERI/KDLH
Wisconsin after the Championship game tomorrow https://flightaware.com/live/flight/EDV5586/history/20210321/0340Z/KERI/KMSN (again, CM8?)
The only ones who would've flown that is missing is Northeastern, who is also in the Championship, although they could be using the plane I assumed was for Boston College, and Providence.
There is a CHANCE Boston College and Providence drove home as well...