BHM confident in airport traffic growth despite losing Via Airlines – Birmingham Business Journal
I realize this is behind a paywall that many of you won’t be able to access, but it gives me the opportunity to at least highlight the plight of Via Air. The airline has basically given up on scheduled service after months of unreliable operations and problematic relationships with airports. It says it’ll stick with charters, but I have to wonder how long that’ll last. The Business Journal asked me what would happen if the airline decided to go back into scheduled service again, and my response (which was my quote in the article) was…
As for going back to scheduled operations, the only real hurdle they’ll face (other than pilots, apparently) is the complete and total loss of consumer confidence that they can deliver a product.
5 comments on “Cranky on the Web: Via Goes Down”
Never heard of them, but I don’t live in that area.
I could read some of the article and then it goes away and tells to sign in, so if anyone tries to read it, don’t get excited and you can’t finish the story.
I just googled the airline name and read a different story about their history. Didn’t include a cranky quote, of course, but at least I now know who Via is…
Cranky owes us a “who the *#$_&$* is via airlines” piece now! Or, from the sound of things, who was via airlines.
They operated a “hub” here in Austin. The quotes on that word are larger than their operation was; they carried 1,131 passengers last month. As in, about as many passengers as a 2x weekly A320 flight on the likes of Allegiant or Frontier.
Hopefully now that they’re gone the two other carriers in AUS’s South Terminal can coordinate schedules and add another few flights per week, maybe even to a destination that Via served (e.g. OKC, or maybe adding MEM back). Pretty sure Spirit does as much traffic out of one gate here as those other two airlines do out of an entire terminal.
I’m dying to know; who puts $$$ into this kind of stuff?!? A high school AvGeek can tell you it’s an workable business plan. What kind of people with (obviously,) deep pockets buy into this garbage? Second….after dipping out on lease obligations at CLT (and a few others IIRC) what kind of airport administrators sign lease agreements with them???