Cancelled, Perhaps for Good
Dozens of cities are impacted by Friday’s FAA decision to allow Airlines to Stop Regional Service.
American Flights Cancelled
- Worcester, Massachusetts
- Aspen Colorado
- Eagle, Colorado
Delta Flights Cancelled
- Erie, Pennsylvania
- Flint, Michigan
- Lincoln, Nebraska
- Williston, North Dakota
United Flights Cancelled
- Fairbanks, Alaska
- Kalamazoo, Michigan
- Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
60 Cities Under Review
Those are some examples. The airlines have targeted 60 cities.
An objection period lasts through next Thursday when the transportation department will make a final ruling.
Should Airlines Cancel Flights?
Yes. Airlines should decide, not the government.
But under the “Cares Act” airlines had to keep a minimum number of flights to locations that it had served before the pandemic hit.
However, the “Cares Act” allowed for exceptions.
Expect about 60 exceptions.
Cities will not completely be without nearby service. For example, Worcester, Mass., is a little over an hour’s drive from Boston Logan.
Regional Impact
Customers will be inconvenienced a bit, having to drive an additional hour or two (we will find out the details shortly).
But the regional businesses, including car rental companies, nearby restaurants, nearby hotels, and all the people working at such places will take a hit.
No V-Shaped Recovery
Factor in local disruptions, with a general overall change in attitudes towards leverage, eating out, business travel, and working at home.
The combination is nasty. The recovery will be shallow and take years.
Global COVID-19 Risk Ranges Up to $82 Trillion
For further discussion, please see Global COVID-19 Risk Ranges Up to $82 Trillion
Mish
I think this blogs information will very useful for all American people to know about flight schedules.
Jack, link to qualitydissertation.co.uk
Aspen and Eagle (Vail) flights are heavily subsidized by Pitkin and Eagle counties. They bring in the skiers while not having much impact on the infrastructure. When skiing (and everything else in town) stopped so did the flights. Aspen went from about 20 flights a day to 3. For a time KASE had direct flights from Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and LAX (in addition to Denver and Salt Lake City which is what one would expect). The FAA is requiring Pitkin county to enlarge the runway to make it possible to land bigger aircraft, but Woody Creek (which sits on the glide path) is fighting it tooth and nail, and they’ve got the cash to keep it in the courts for decades. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out in the post-COVID world, but that’s another topic.
Now American and United are running minimal flights. There’s a daily milk-run between Denver, the mountain towns and SLC. There’s a flight or two to DIA. That’s it. It will be interesting to see what the schedule looks like next week now that they’ve got permission from the FAA. I wonder if they’ll give any money back to the counties?
People in Worcester, MA can drive to Bradley International in Windsor Locks CT. The drive is a few more miles away than Logan, but there is far less traffic and parking rate are a lot less.
Yes, a lot of rural customers can take the Greyhound bus rather than an airplane to a major city. As a city slicker I’m sick and tired of subsidizing these local yokals who don’t want to live in the big city. (Speaking as somebody who has three country homes in three different countries, lol. When the going gets tough, the tough get going…fleeing to the countryside!)
There’ll likely be more…
The town I just moved from is 270 miles from Portland, the nearest big city. It is a regional city and more than a 4 hour drive to the PDX airport. Even without passengers a lot of planes fly contracted cargo. Federal like mail as well as other. They cannot allow that to end. For one thing between Portland and Seattle to the North and SF to the south there is a stretch of some 600+ miles of airspace without a runway long enough to accomodate a plane in distress such as mechanical failure or a passenger with a life threatening health issue. The runways can accomodate any plane flown today, and were expanded extra long just for that reason. But during the CV pandemic I think many flights must have been empty, or with just a couple people flying.
Yes, cargo is profitable, and about 30-40% of revenue in a passenger plane, said the Wendover productions YouTube channel, was cargo. Lots of passenger planes being converted to cargo now.
Bend?
No, Medford. Runway is 8,800 feet.
I have Hertz up on my screen now. Aware of it and knew it was coming.
The amount of debt they carrying is insane for the business they are in…
They are just the first. Most of the other rental car businesses will also go broke.
They have 3 major flaws.
I just rented a premium sedan for a week for $159. I will put about 1200 miles on the car in that week. At $.30 a mile that $360 dollars. They would be better letting it sit on the lot. I suspect breakeven is more like $.45 a mile when figuring in overhead.
It doesn’t get more deflationary then when you pay people to use your service. There should be another word for that. Hyperdeflationay maybe?
Unicorns are everywhere now.
LOL, last summer I put 1800 miles on a rental in 5 days, for $131. I’m sure their cost is over $.07 a mile. On the other hand, they have a peculiar business model where they buy cars at a huge discount, and then sell them as used cars with low mileage, so it’s hard for an outsider to really know what their costs are.
Yeah it’s very difficult to get their actual cost.
The draining part also with their business model is many of their rentals don’t get drive much at all. Airport to hotel around and back to hotel. That business is all but gone leaving them with people like us that rent cars because the math is in their favor.
They will have a new name – Hertruptcy..
O/T again…
In Spain protests are warming up along with the weather
The gov is saying there will be 10 days of mourning, to book holidays for summer, 600 eu fine for not wearing mask when within 2 metres etc. those are just from the above today.
Seems UK is giving Spain low priority and focusing on Greece and Portugal as travel corridors.
Car rental companies? Hertz just filed for bankruptcy protection.
Yes, it’s only Hertz for a little while.