bval wrote:joeblow10 wrote:32andBelow wrote:How is one daily jet service a big brand that offers connections and a code shares sub standard? The future of EAS might be 5-7 flights a week to a major hub. I think it’s either that or twice daily triangle routings when 2 cities are close together.
Agreed. If anything, I think these communities should be clamoring for the opportunity at once daily jet service over 2-3x daily prop service on a 9-19 seater. I have nothing against props, but there is undoubtedly a certain public stigma against them that certainly makes serving the community harder from the start
As a regular flyer on 9 seat EAS service I have to say I'll gladly take 2-3x daily service over once daily. EAS is the first/last stop of at least a one stop flight, maybe more. Having a morning and evening flight option are essential to folks being able to get somewhere or get home in one day. If every flight requires an extra overnight on one or both ends of the trip just to make the connection it can make the service unattractive all together.
The best outcome is cities retaining both jet service and multiple frequencies but where that's not possible multiple 9, 19, or 30 seaters is a close second. I could even see one jet a day and 1-2x smaller flights being a compromise but today few carriers can offer both. I think DAC might be the only one?
Who's gonna pay for this though?
We pump cash into subsidizing small, financially unstable carriers into serving communities with an effective footprint smaller than the smallest suburb of Boston. How many flights to the boonies do the taxpayers have to fund? I'd gladly take 2-3 daily flights over 1, but if you're looking to trim the DOT budget, this is low hanging fruit.
Perfect example here - Crescent City, CA. It's 2 hours from Medford, which has regular airline service it can sustain, and a total population of 7,000 people. That's a good sized, dense city block in NYC. Is a 2 hour drive to another city an undue burden? I would think not... the drive from the old home in Denver to the airport was an hour or more, and still in the same county.
US airlines can't make 50 seat regional affiliates work in the first place - how are they going to make it work on subsidies, flying airplanes with 9 people on them? It's not a matter of capacity, it's a matter of costs. Operating an RJ into a city is exponentially more expensive than Dave 'n Bud's Cornfield Caravan Crew, and I can't imagine all the Southern Airways Express C208s are full every day.
If it were me I would cut EAS to ribbons and create a means-testing model for determining if a community should warrant such a substantial subsidy (up to $800/seat as of 15 years ago per NYT). The problem is the government investment in keeping these carriers (Southern, Boutique, PenAir, Denver Air Connection, etc.) alive is probably substantially ameliorating the pilot shortage issue by providing a lot of pilots that want nothing more than to escape to driving a 50 seat RJ with a deferred APU in the summer.
Beggars can't be choosers, and EAS is just going to have to roll with the punches. There are less qualified pilots on the market than there were 10 years ago in relation to the number of jobs out there. If your business model is relying on government subsidy because you can't bring in enough ticket revenue to keep the employees on staff, and the whole business model is digging in on the subsidies, you can own the airplanes outright and pay nothing for parking, but it's not going to last in this hiring environment.
LOL