Cranky on the Web: Cincinnati Fares Finally Drop, Latrobe Loves Spirit

Spirit Airlines lifts fortunes of Arnold Palmer Regional Airport – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Latrobe is booming thanks to Spirit’s presence at the airport, and this is apparently news. I chimed in to add that the airport shouldn’t get too carried away. Spirit doesn’t have to stay if things turn south.

CVG unseated as No. 1 – and it’s a good thing – Cincinnati Enquirer
After spending so many years on the list of most expensive airports, Cincinnati’s fares are finally coming down thanks to entries by Frontier and Allegiant.

Brett

10 responses to “Cranky on the Web: Cincinnati Fares Finally Drop, Latrobe Loves Spirit”

TRC

May 2, 2015

The link to the second (Cincinnati Enquirer) article appears to be broken.

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1. CF
  
  May 2, 2015
  
  TRC – Ack – sorry about that. I put http in there twice. It’s fixed now.
  
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2. Bill
  
  May 2, 2015
  
  Put a colon between the http and the //
  
  http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/04/28/cvg-airfares-fourth-quarter/26514345/
  
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JayB

May 2, 2015

Latrobe and Spirit. More power to Latrobe. Others? Airlines will go to wherever than can get money. My guess, it was easier to get Latrobe and Westmoreland County to put up the money than it would have been to get money from Pittisburgh.

These relationships make great stores but remember, just “follow the money.”

Please consider…
Spirit–an airline that will “nickel and dime” its customers to death. How much money do you think Spirit is putting into this venure, that could end in a blink of the eye? If they stopped operating from Latrobe, do they have anything to lose? My guess, not much, if anything! But, that’s OK as long as you know what you are getting into.

Latrobe–population 8,338, last census. People whose median annual income is in the range of $35-45,000.
Westmoreland County–population 365,000. Congressman until his death, John Murtha. John always knew where the money was. Part of a gerrymandered district, stretchnging into Pittsburgh, a district that looks like most districts in this country today!
And the Westmoreland County Airport Authority. Where does it get its money? How much is it getting from Spirit? Yes, more jobs. But, who is really paying for those jobs?

And, PennDot? Where does PennDot get its money? How much of this money is coming from the taxpayers all over the Commonwealth? How much is coming from the Federal taxpayers?

Again, nothing wrong with this as long as you understand what is going on and you aren’t a hypocrite criticizing every other small communty in America wanting to do the same thing or not always complaining about “big government.”

Wish you well, Latrobe!

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Jim

May 2, 2015

The problem with the federal airfare data is that it only looks at average domestic ticket price, without regard to destination. Therefore, having more short-haul flights will make it appear like the prices are lower. Price per mile flown would be a better metric.

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Steve out of CVG

May 2, 2015

Frontier added daily CVG-ATL and LAS. Will that help biz travelers? Nope.

The problem is although the once a year vacation travelers
will suffer through a 3 to 4 hr flight with minimum services to LAS to go on to lose money at the slots, the biz traveler needs multiple options and contingencies when weather and your schedule changes at the last minute. The low fare carriers can’t do this unless they create a hub/spoke system and that’s unlikely since they’ll drop a market if the numbers don’t maintain a certain revenue number. I don’t see the low cost airlines catering to the P&Gs, GEs and other large employers in Cincy so the occasional Disney-bound vacationer gets a break. For now.

I’m hoping AA picks up more destinations out of CVG besides their hubs and updates the planes beyond the 50 seaters to counter DLs reduction in service. I’m getting tired of riding DL RJ145s and old CRJ 50 seaters.

Cranky, I haven’t run the DL vs Frontier fares to ATL yet since I’m sure Frontier has intro fares right now. Do you see DL lowering fares to put the hurt on Frontier like DL has done in the past?

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1. Jim
  
  May 2, 2015
  
  The low-cost carriers were never intended to serve business customers. They serve leisure travelers who are going on vacation. Business travelers will need to stick with the legacy carriers, and connect somewhere if their nonstop has been eliminated.
  
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2. CF
  
  May 3, 2015
  
  Steve – Delta hasn’t been matching the lowest Frontier fares in the market but they did put some Basic Economy fares in there at a higher level to at least try to prevent Frontier from being too successful.
  
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SDFDuck

May 3, 2015

One thing that CVG has working against it is the fact that there’s no WN presence. WN has pretty decent-sized operations in IND and CMH, which keeps fares to those cities honest. G4 and F9 service to leisure markets is all well and good, but they won’t put a sizeable dent in the lion’s share of fortress-hub fares.

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Alex Hill

May 4, 2015

Surprised to see that MSN is now the “leader” in airfare. I guess it’s a market which is heavily saturated with business (Epic Systems, largely) travelers, since leisure travelers will drive or take the bus to MKE or ORD when there are cheaper flights. (Bus to ORD and a nonstop is often cheaper and faster and always more reliable than connecting MSN-ORD-XXX.) But there were typically good leisure fares when I lived there as long as it wasn’t Monday or Thursday.

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