JSX is good guess. In the past 2 weeks multiple new routes have been announced including BUR-SLC,BUR-SJD and LAS-SJC. Texas is the next region of expansion JSX is focusing on, so this would be a wise guess

AC4500 wrote:

Cboyle wrote:

It’s not G4 as was said earlier in the thread... I think it is SY

SY isn't going to be announcing anything outside of MSP at the moment.

You forget SY has AUS-CUN.

My guess right now is Sun Country

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Definitely SY... announcing FRG and FCA...

MU from PVG to SAT.

Sun Country practically confirmed.

SAT-CUN begins May 28.

Well dang, I guess I was wrong....

Looks like it's SY, SAT-CUN.

Now bookable on their site for May.

Well, I was right. A beach market to Mexico that has been served many times in the past by various carriers. Yawn. Quite silly of me to think that it could be to a new destination not served in he past like PVR or SJD.
I'm sure they will serve it for a year or two at most before pulling out as most airlines do with SAT flights that aren't to Dallas or Houston or ATL.

TransWorldOne wrote:

Well, I was right. A beach market to Mexico that has been served many times in the past by various carriers. Yawn. Quite silly of me to think that it could be to a new destination not served in he past like PVR or SJD.
I'm sure they will serve it for a year or two at most before pulling out as most airlines do with SAT flights that aren't to Dallas or Houston or ATL.

I think a year is quite generous, i'd give it 6 months tops.

SAT-CUN on SY per this?

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1457053

TransWorldOne wrote:

Well, I was right. A beach market to Mexico that has been served many times in the past by various carriers. Yawn. Quite silly of me to think that it could be to a new destination not served in he past like PVR or SJD.
I'm sure they will serve it for a year or two at most before pulling out as most airlines do with SAT flights that aren't to Dallas or Houston or ATL.

You’re an optimist. With the CDC US entry requirements for international travel Plus OAL competition? My guess is advanced bookings will be so low, that it doesn’t start in May, maybe not this year. I believe the only hope for all US carriers flying to international destinations is a much faster vaccine roll out. The CDC restrictions are just too cumbersome.

Interesting, WN is already starting SAT-CUN back up in March.

I hate to say this, but SAT is a dying airport; practically on life support especially with COVID-19. The only saving grace for the area is if Austin and San Antonio create a new airport between the two, it can certainly become a DFW-lite airport. Otherwise, in due time, I think even ELP will surpass SAT.

DariusBieber wrote:

I hate to say this, but SAT is a dying airport; practically on life support especially with COVID-19. The only saving grace for the area is if Austin and San Antonio create a new airport between the two, it can certainly become a DFW-lite airport. Otherwise, in due time, I think even ELP will surpass SAT.

Crazy things is Austin approached S.A. about building a regional airport between the two in the 80's and S. A. officials scoffed at the idea. When Bergstrom AFB closed it became a moot point. I guess hindsight is 20/20.

DariusBieber wrote:

I hate to say this, but SAT is a dying airport; practically on life support especially with COVID-19.

Is there any airport in the US to which this statement wouldn't apply? Very few airports can survive long term independent of government assistance with post-COVID traffic levels (given that facilities were constructed to handle so much more traffic). Airport expenses have high fixed cost component for debt service and airport revenue is largely variable based on passenger count and weight landed. This makes for a fundamental cost mismatch when demand takes a nose dive. Short of airports where cargo operations dominate, they all must be hurting tremendously right now.

DariusBieber wrote:

I hate to say this, but SAT is a dying airport; practically on life support especially with COVID-19. The only saving grace for the area is if Austin and San Antonio create a new airport between the two, it can certainly become a DFW-lite airport. Otherwise, in due time, I think even ELP will surpass SAT.

Apologies--this post will go a bit off-topic, but SAT has long been stuck within the shadow of AUS because of all the business traffic that AUS has been able to attract. SAT just doesn't have that kind of draw. Pre-COVID, the legacy airlines flocked towards business-centric metropolitan areas, such as AUS because that's where the money is, and that's where the most business and first class seats can be sold and filled. There's a reason why LAX-AUS has more than twice the amount of nonstop flights that LAX-SAT has.

However, since business traffic is going to take much longer to recover and the airlines are now seeking as much revenue from leisure traffic as possible, I think SAT has a chance to come back much stronger than they were pre-COVID. I know metropolitan population numbers mean virtually nothing when it comes to airlines adding flights, but San Antonio's larger population in comparison to Austin may bode well for them as leisure traffic continues to recover faster than business traffic. I think F9 or NK would find major success in setting up a strong focus city in San Antonio in order to capture as much leisure traffic as possible. However, since SY relies heavily on a "local draw" and has a history of past failures in establishing other focus cities outside of MSP, I don't think they are the right airline to do this.

The problem is, San Antonians are so used to connecting that there is very little demand for nonstop flights outside of Dallas, Houston, and ATL. Not even LAX is being served from SAT right now. And unfortunately, San Antonio doesn't have the business traffic that Austin generates to attract more nonstop flights. I don't think SAT is dying necessarily, but I don't see it supporting service outside of core hubs + the large Mexican markets any time soon. Oh, and Vegas. San Antonians love Vegas. I really am rooting for San Antonio. I feel like it punches way below its weight. My only hope is that once Austin becomes the Texas version of California (which is well underway), we will see a lot of people get priced out of that market and head south to SA which will drive demand for more flights from SAT.

From my observations, seemed like Precovid, the flights between SAT and LAX had decent loads on a regular basis. In fact, Pre-Covid SAT-LAX had 9 daily flights (vs Austin having 13 or maybe 14). It also seemed prices were more often than not higher on LAX-SAT when compared to LAX-AUS.

As one of the posters wrote, too many people will either drive to AUS or will change planes at hubs. The lack of flights has been only during Covid. In the absence of nonstop service, the airlines have left travelers with only those these two options - besides not traveling. I wonder, how much travel across the country has been cancelled by travelers who would rather stay home before taking two flights.

Airlines every month seem to have been pushing back/delaying restart of service. Hopefully DL will actually restart in March.

Sorry to see SAT, an amazing city, struggling with flights.

I hear arguments like folks won't fly out of SAT, they will just drive the 90 minutes to AUS to save a few dollars? Really? San Antoinio has 1/2 million people more than Austin.

I live about 35 minutes southwest of TUS (tucson) airport. I can fly anywhere cheaper with better schedules out of PHX (phoenix). However, the extra 90+ minutes is a big deal. (it's far, but we can drive 80mph+ here in AZ). I will always fly out of TUS even though that means I probably make an extra connection. After, I've flown all day.. the last thing I want to do is get my car out of parking and drive anouther 125 minutes, when I could be home in just over 1/2 an hour instead.

I'm surprised the number of people who will endure the extra expense, time and energy (fatigue) to add significant time/distance to their travel on both ends.

(as an aside... Austin and San Antonio... both are really cool cities.!)

FiscAutTecGarte wrote:

I hear arguments like folks won't fly out of SAT, they will just drive the 90 minutes to AUS to save a few dollars? Really? San Antoinio has 1/2 million people more than Austin.

I live about 35 minutes southwest of TUS (tucson) airport. I can fly anywhere cheaper with better schedules out of PHX (phoenix). However, the extra 90+ minutes is a big deal. (it's far, but we can drive 80mph+ here in AZ). I will always fly out of TUS even though that means I probably make an extra connection. After, I've flown all day.. the last thing I want to do is get my car out of parking and drive anouther 125 minutes, when I could be home in just over 1/2 an hour instead.

I'm surprised the number of people who will endure the extra expense, time and energy (fatigue) to add significant time/distance to their travel on both ends.

(as an aside... Austin and San Antonio... both are really cool cities.!)

Don't forget that Austin and San Antonio are barely an hour apart. Someone living in the NE suburbs of San Antonio could easily drive to AUS in under an hour (depending on traffic conditions). With all the competition at AUS, fares can be substantially lower and San Antonio is a very price-sensitive market. Driving to AUS to catch a nonstop flight rather than connect in Dallas or Houston could shave quite a bit of time off the journey.

DariusBieber wrote:

I hate to say this, but SAT is a dying airport; practically on life support especially with COVID-19. The only saving grace for the area is if Austin and San Antonio create a new airport between the two, it can certainly become a DFW-lite airport. Otherwise, in due time, I think even ELP will surpass SAT.

SAT carried almost 3x the amount of domestic passengers that ELP carried in 2019, with SAT carrying 9,826,490 passengers in 2019 and ELP carrying 3,495,225 passengers in 2019.

I probably do not expect ELP to surpass SAT anytime soon with SAT carrying significantly more passengers than ELP and with SAT still having nonstop service to some destinations not served nonstop from ELP.

And some international passengers to Europe and other countries, drive from SAT to Houston (and may be Austin now, but AUS pre-COVID was expensive to fly internationally). Some of the international passengers drive from Austin to IAH to save money and time. It saves a connection. Specifically I see EK, QR and TK attracting this crowd for passengers flying to Asia and Africa.

Wacko55 wrote:

Crazy things is Austin approached S.A. about building a regional airport between the two in the 80's and S. A. officials scoffed at the idea. When Bergstrom AFB closed it became a moot point. I guess hindsight is 20/20.

Proposals for regional airport for San Antonio-Austin first surfaced around 1970 coming on the heels of San Antonio voters rejecting an airport runway bond package. San Antonio made the initial overtures to Austin about a regional facility.

modernArt wrote:

Wacko55 wrote:

Crazy things is Austin approached S.A. about building a regional airport between the two in the 80's and S. A. officials scoffed at the idea. When Bergstrom AFB closed it became a moot point. I guess hindsight is 20/20.

Proposals for regional airport for San Antonio-Austin first surfaced around 1970 coming on the heels of San Antonio voters rejecting an airport runway bond package. San Antonio made the initial overtures to Austin about a regional facility.

Interesting that around 1970 S. A. would have approached the small college town of Austin, which had a population of around 250,000, to build a regional airport between the two cities. I was unaware of that occurring. Usually it's the other way around. Either way a regional airport was not built and won't be in our lifetime.

San Antonio also has several packed "flights" a day full of Space A military flyers. It may not seem like much but 100s and 100s of pax, many retirees, fly out of Kelly and the various military pax terminals in SA. Probably still at least 75-80,000 pax a year. Which is not huge but still drawing away from the airport (which gets a lot of Uncle Sam related traffic on GSA city pair tickets to be fair)

The drive up 35 is getting worse not better right now; though there is construction to widen it. The Toll road has an 85 mph speed limit however.

In all fairness, SAT was served adequately prior to Covid. We definitely lacked a flight to Boston and Portland (daily and year round). We were underserved to the DC and Bay areas. Passenger numbers were steadily increasing YoY despite the leakage to Houston and Austin area airports. I have a lot of IT colleagues that travel to India. They would almost always drive to Houston and then fly to India, even if they were flying on an American carrier. Lately, Austin had begun to cut into it but then Covid changed it back to Houston.

On the other hand, Austin was always somewhat overserved both domestically and internationally. It is a fact that Austin-Europe was overserved. 7 airlines on the AUS-LAX route doesn't make sense. Adding flights when most of the tech companies have frozen travel and switched to remote work makes even less sense. But, Austin has benefited from rapid expansions and company relocations of tech companies, as well as a very enthusiastic city leadership that aggressively incentivizes airlines and companies. Such leadership was nonexistent in SA a few years ago but now they are starting to make some progress atleast on the airport side. Obviously they've got ways to go and Covid has not helped. It will definitely get better as the situation improves.

DariusBieber wrote:

I hate to say this, but SAT is a dying airport; practically on life support especially with COVID-19. The only saving grace for the area is if Austin and San Antonio create a new airport between the two, it can certainly become a DFW-lite airport. Otherwise, in due time, I think even ELP will surpass SAT.

Why would Austin need to build a new airport to share with San Antonio? They have plenty of room to expand and even add a third runway. They have a 12,250' runway that can handle any commercial aircraft. AUS very conveniently located to downtown, the capitol, and the University of Texas. It's also pretty convenient to people in San Marcos and New Braunfels.

rajincajun01 wrote:

AC4500 wrote:

Cboyle wrote:

It’s not G4 as was said earlier in the thread... I think it is SY

SY isn't going to be announcing anything outside of MSP at the moment.

You forget SY has AUS-CUN.

Do you think it is likely we will get JetBlue?

Prior to the pandemic, I would have said that SAT would be a likely contender for JetBlue service to BOS. Now, I don't see it happening any time soon.

The idea of a SAT/AUS joint airport was actually floated by the civic leaders (Pike Powers & Co.) in Austin. San Antonio had just built a new terminal and nixed that idea very quickly. Austin started to build a new in Manor when the Base Closure Commission decided to close Bergstrom and Austin decided to build there. It would be silly for Austin to build a joint airport and my suggestion to the city and the airport folks in SA is to move to the recently closed Kelly AFB. Lots of room and a very long runway.

TyroneShoes wrote:

The idea of a SAT/AUS joint airport was actually floated by the civic leaders (Pike Powers & Co.) in Austin. San Antonio had just built a new terminal and nixed that idea very quickly. Austin started to build a new in Manor when the Base Closure Commission decided to close Bergstrom and Austin decided to build there. It would be silly for Austin to build a joint airport and my suggestion to the city and the airport folks in SA is to move to the recently closed Kelly AFB. Lots of room and a very long runway.

This was already discussed earlier in the thread.

ryanrap1 wrote:

rajincajun01 wrote:

AC4500 wrote:

SY isn't going to be announcing anything outside of MSP at the moment.

You forget SY has AUS-CUN.

Do you think it is likely we will get JetBlue?

Anything is possible in the current environment. I would assume no, but who saw B6 going to MIA or growing RDU?

Ishrion wrote:

ryanrap1 wrote:

Where do they fly from Texas to?

MEX-LRD/MFE

AC4500 wrote:

TransWorldOne wrote:

Didn't Aeromar fly to SAT in the past? I seem to recall them flying SAT-SLP for a while, in the early 2000s perhaps?

I seem to remember Aeromar at SAT as well. It's possible that they could return.

Looks like they did:

Aeromar plans to offer direct service from San Antonio to Saltillo, continuing to San Luis Potosí, plus return flights, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. A tentative start date is March 28.

https://www.mysanantonio.com/business/a ... 353702.php

the flight was: MLM-SLP-SAT-SLP-MLM 3 days a week ATR-42

sprxUSA wrote:

Boutique Air nonstop to ELP lol....

Yes, the more options the better. ELP Times made the announcement yesterday. Locals can go to ABQ or DFW indirectly too via CNM.
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/ ... 314901001/

SY reported last week that it will start CUN-SAT May 28th, just in time for summer vacation. Unexciting as the announcement may be, it will San Antonio's only service to the Yucatan. Seems like it's about time.

https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2021/01 ... to-cancun/