This week’s featured link:
United adding Miami-Washington Dulles flights as American drops route – USA Today
As someone who lives close to Dulles said to me, “Am I the only one shocked to find out they didn’t already fly this?” Sure enough, United didn’t fly Dulles to Miami, but it will now. I didn’t pick up that American was also dropping the route until I saw it here. I remember back in college when United flew an evening flight from National down to Miami to meet up with its Latin bank down there. When that mini-hub closed, the flight disappeared. And United has long been a ghost in Florida, though Continental had a much more robust offering than United when the merger happened. I assumed this new service was meant to help United in its quest to focus local traffic in Newark and connecting traffic in Dulles, however, that southbound flight leaves at 8:15am. I guess that picks up some connecting traffic from nearby, but this is definitely not part of the European hub.
Two for the road:
Jetlagged: Kemp shifts stance on airline fuel tax break – Atlanta Journal Constitution
Remember when the Georgia legislature flipped out at Delta for removing a discount for the NRA and decided not to give a fuel tax break? Well, now that the primary election absurdity is over, Georgia’s governor went ahead and gave it anyway. Of course, this is still a political issue. The Republican nominee has now flip-flopped from his previous stance and supports it, because, well, I guess he’s determined he’ll benefit more from sounding a pro-business stance in the general election.
Via Air reviewing policy after stranded passengers claim promises broken – KXAN
I’ve heard of Via Air and seen their airplanes around, but I don’t know much about the airline. It sounds like at best they’re having growing problems. At worst, there could be some seriously shady business practices going on here. Let’s hope it’s the former and this gets fixed before it kills the airline. (via View from the Wing)
9 comments on “3 Links I Love: The Dulles-Miami Shuffle, Flip-Flopping in Georgia, Via Air’s Not-So-Stellar Record”
IAD-FLL is a relatively recent (re-) addition (like 2016), that one’s timed to collect Europeans for the TATL banks.
IAD is the weirdest hub. I had the same reaction as your friend, I can’t believe there is only one flight per day to MIA. AA runs 9 flights to MIA from DCA! I seriously don’t think the DC area Miami traffic is really that skewed toward the city. If I had to guess, I would have thought UA and AA would each have had 3-4x coverage on that route. I was way off!
I would have thought United flew IAD-MIA also. While AA may have a HUB there, guess no one at UA thought anyone from the Dulles area would want to fly to Miami and/or connect to another carrier heading south from there.
I could be wrong, but I think the realignment of Washington – Miami service is a manifestation of the new way airlines are competing post deregulation. Instead of two carriers going both head-to-head and airport-to-airport in an all-out battle for market share, each competitor operates from where it has strength. It’s still competitive but it’s a lot more rational.
Some airlines deserve to be killed. Sounds like Via Air might be one of them…
Even more so if their corporate slogan is “Above and Beyond” (source: Wikipedia)
DL always gets its way in the end when dealing with the state of Georgia.
UA once flew IAD-MIA with wide bodies, usually a 767-300ER but subbed a 747-100 once in 1995. (Nice upgrade that day!) Typical schedule:
UA 914 MIA 135p IAD 404p
UA 915 IAD 530p MIA 803p
The scheduling obviously flowed aircraft Europe-IAD-MIA-Latin and return.
And a quick check on Kayak.com turned up only three nonstops from BWI to MIA, all on American.