Pittsburgh Airport

1000 mile radius

Pittsburgh Airport was the major hub of USAirways up until 2004. Since then it has lost roughly half it's passenger load, and now it serves 8 MAP, and is ranked #47.
The capacity remains, as well as the 4 runways.

At one point the nation was considering building rural airports to function as transfer points. But PIT is probably the best example of an underutilized airport in a small metropolis.

Quote: Pacomartin

Pittsburgh Airport was the major hub of USAirways up until 2004. Since then it has lost roughly half it's passenger load, and now it serves 8 MAP, and is ranked #47.
The capacity remains, as well as the 4 runways.

At one point the nation was considering building rural airports to function as transfer points. But PIT is probably the best example of an underutilized airport in a small metropolis.

For 10 years it was a model. The air mall actually had locals who would shop there! 9/11 killed that, though it is one of the few if only airports that you can enter with a hotel key as well as being a ticketed passenger. Last I saw it half of thave he terminal was closed, abandoned. before they restricted access you could walk the concourses and see the ghost town they had become.

I always thought they should have made a play for jetBlue, opposed to way more expensive JFK, as an eastern hub. Midway between NYC and Chicago would be some kind of logical location one would assume, but I suppose the cost savings is lost by having to make more hope for people actually traveling to the major market vs thru it.

One thing you missed is there are two USAF bases, a reserve and a guard, that use it. When I worked across the highway we would see AF1 parked outside the reserve base.

Is Relief for Airport Crowds in Middle of Nowhere?
By CARL H. LAVIN Published: March 24, 1989
What if they built a major airport far from cities and hotels, houses and highways?
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/24/us/is-relief-for-airport-crowds-in-middle-of-nowhere.html?pagewanted=all

At one point in time they really considered building airports in the middle of nowhere. They figured that land would be cheap, they could build as many runways as possible, and these airports would function as transfer points. The idea was that they would keep the transfer passenger from crowding up the destination passenger at major hubs like Chicago O-Hare.

But we have massive excess airport capacity at former hubs like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and St. Louis. If you seriously considering building an airport in a village of 12,000 people just because they have a runway from World War I, then why not transfer at a mid size city which already has the runways and the airport built?

Rantoul Illinois


Rantoul Illinois Air Base is KTIP


KTIP ORD 117 mi
KTIP STL 160 mi
KTIP CVG 204 mi
KTIP CLE 338 mi
KTIP PIT 417 mi

FAA Large Hubs in Great Lakes Region
ORD Chicago Chicago O'Hare International 36,305,668
MDW Chicago Chicago Midway International 10,830,783
MSP Minneapolis Minneapolis-St Paul International/Wold-Chamberlain 17,634,252
DTW Detroit Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County 16,255,507

Where is the Fifth Runway group in Pittsburgh...campaigning that we need a fifth runway no matter what the cost?

Whatever funds were spent, they have the runways and I do not see the Chamber of Commerce doing anything, only perhaps the Airport.

What does the airport sell? Distance? Visibility? What? Convenience? Ah ah... perhaps no one goes to Pittsburg for a reason.

Can the CoC demonstrate anything:

Surface transit from downtown Pittsburgh to Grope by TSA?
Lack of need for airport funding, so once you locate your business there... you won't be trapped by special taxes.
January tradition in Pittsburgh?
Number of Hippie Communes and friend Tribes still in PIttsburgh?
Bicycle friendly city.
Ultra high speed internet.
Lots of Computer Geeks avaiable as employees.
Sensible zoning laws in Pittsburgh.

Then it becomes an ad campaign: Bring your Data Cloud to Sunny Pittsburgh. Bring your airplane maintenance facility and training center to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh tax rate on Airplane Simulators is ZERO. Pittsburgh has designated Stall Training Area nearby. Pittsburgh has a night life so those Geeks and their Wives you hire to work in the Data Cloud won't go stark raving mad. Real estate values in Pittsburgh are still sensible. Etc. Etc.

Perhaps teh Airport Chamber of Commerce and the City Chambr of Commerce have to merge so that downtown Pittsburgh gets revitalized because the airport no longer drags city finances down. Perhaps the CoC should visit that Cumberland MD Golf Resort and see if they will put on their website 'Fifty dollars off your room rate if fly from Pittsburgh". Enough such deals in the area and perhaps the airlines will want to service Pittsburgh more often.

Quote: Fleastiff

Number of Hippie Communes and friend Tribes still in PIttsburgh?
Bicycle friendly city.
Ultra high speed internet.
Lots of Computer Geeks avaiable as employees.
Sensible zoning laws in Pittsburgh.

Don't get me started on some of this stuff. This place is blue-collar no more. While nobody paid attention it became Seattle without the rain.

Quote:

Perhaps teh Airport Chamber of Commerce and the City Chambr of Commerce have to merge so that downtown Pittsburgh gets revitalized because the airport no longer drags city finances down. Perhaps the CoC should visit that Cumberland MD Golf Resort and see if they will put on their website 'Fifty dollars off your room rate if fly from Pittsburgh". Enough such deals in the area and perhaps the airlines will want to service Pittsburgh more often.

As I read this thread I can see why the rural-airport thing will never work. It will seem strange, but bear with me. When I managed in pest control my regional bosses when the lease would come up they would slight to hard break my balls about moving from Rochester to Batavia. Batavia sits midway between Rochester and Buffalo. Their idea was easier to service both markets. I had to explain that it would not work as all it did was go from one easy to service and one really hard to two hard. In that business you needed to be in your good market, not miles from it. To explain exactly why is hard, but if you work the business you can see it.

So for airports, you could make Pittsburgh a way station. So you have a repair facility there. If you land few planes there you always have to reroute for repairs. You have to make a trip when upper management wants to see things for themselves. And importantly, the more people flying thru than to the more you have to match up routes. IOW, if it was such a good idea someone would have done it in the 1970s.

Quote: AZDuffman

Don't get me started on some of this stuff. This place is blue-collar no more. While nobody paid attention it became Seattle without the rain.

For people who worry about it, it is probably the last major East Coast City (pop>300K) which is not minority-majority (White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, April 1, 2010: > 50%)
64.8% Pittsburgh
47.0% Boston

8,550,405 New York New York (33.3%)
3,971,883 Los Angeles California
2,720,546 Chicago Illinois
2,296,224 Houston Texas
1,567,442 Philadelphia Pennsylvania (36.9%)
1,563,025 Phoenix Arizona
1,469,845 San Antonio Texas
1,394,928 San Diego California
1,300,092 Dallas Texas
1,026,908 San Jose California
931,830 Austin Texas
868,031 Jacksonville Florida (55.1%) Merged City with County unincorporated Areas
864,816 San Francisco California
853,173 Indianapolis Indiana
850,106 Columbus Ohio
833,319 Fort Worth Texas
827,097 Charlotte North Carolina (45.1%)
684,451 Seattle Washington
682,545 Denver Colorado
681,124 El Paso Texas
677,116 Detroit Michigan
672,228 Washington District of Columbia
667,137 Boston Massachusetts
655,770 Memphis Tennessee
654,610 Nashville Tennessee
632,309 Portland Oregon
631,346 Oklahoma City Oklahoma
623,747 Las Vegas Nevada
621,849 Baltimore Maryland
615,366 Louisville Kentucky
600,155 Milwaukee Wisconsin
559,121 Albuquerque New Mexico
531,641 Tucson Arizona
520,052 Fresno California
490,712 Sacramento California
475,378 Kansas City Missouri
474,140 Long Beach California
471,825 Mesa Arizona
463,878 Atlanta Georgia
456,568 Colorado Springs Colorado
452,745 Virginia Beach Virginia
451,066 Raleigh North Carolina (51.3%)
443,885 Omaha Nebraska
441,003 Miami Florida
419,267 Oakland California
410,939 Minneapolis Minnesota
403,505 Tulsa Oklahoma
389,965 Wichita Kansas
389,617 New Orleans Louisiana
388,125 Arlington Texas
388,072 Cleveland Ohio
373,640 Bakersfield California
369,075 Tampa Florida (46.3%)
359,407 Aurora Colorado
352,769 Honolulu Hawai'i
350,742 Anaheim California
335,400 Santa Ana California
324,074 Corpus Christi Texas
322,424 Riverside California
315,685 St. Louis Missouri
314,488 Lexington Kentucky
305,658 Stockton California
304,391 Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
300,851 Saint Paul Minnesota


http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/cities/rank/white-not-hispanic-population-percentage

Quote: AZDuffman

As I read this thread I can see why the rural-airport thing will never work.

It's a natural reaction to people hearing that they will run out of gates and runways. Let's just build new terminals and runways in a more convenient place. Probably the first major effort was in Canada in the 1960's. Montreal was then the primary gateway to Canada. They said we'll just build a supplemental airport a few miles north of Montréal. It was, of course, one of the great planning disasters of all time in Northern America.

1 Toronto Pearson International Airport Greater Toronto Area 41,036,847
2 Vancouver International Airport Metro Vancouver 20,315,978
3 Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport Greater Montreal 15,517,382
4 Calgary International Airport Calgary 15,475,759
5 Edmonton International Airport Edmonton Capital Region 7,981,076


I think the next one will be the Ivanpah Valley Airport in Las Vegas. Legislation was signed on October 28, 2000, allowing Clark County to purchase land for a new commercial airport. Clark County is bought 6,500 acres of land in the Ivanpah Valley from the Bureau of Land Management about 30 miles southwest of McCarran International Airport for the Ivanpah Airport.

McCarran is at 45,389,074 passengers in 2015, and construction of Ivanpah is supposed to begin once McCarran reaches 50MAP.

Quote: Pacomartin

For people who worry about it, it is probably the last major East Coast City (pop>300K) which is not minority-majority (White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, April 1, 2010: > 50%)
64.8% Pittsburgh
47.0% Boston

It is slowly changing, but it used to be that nonwhite=black in Pittsburgh. My high school had IIRC 5 blacks and 3-4 orientals. Note I did not say "%." Most of the suburbs were the same. 1950-2000 nobody moved here. Only city to lose population in all 3 decades 1950s-1990s. Starting in the 1990s it changed just a bit.

The last 10 years and really the last 5, people are looking at this place. I saw an article in some Brooklyn paper that talked about moving here, and the article mentioned that the price for a house was not a joke. I was simply amazed last year how many people come from Asia to go to the schools here. The place is amazingly changed from when I left 20 years ago next month.

Inertia will keep it white majority another 10 years, maybe 20. One growing local problem is blacks being pushed out of "their" parts of town due to gentrification. I have seen some ugly graffiti messages. It will be a rough thing because unlike the 1960 when whites got pushed, the blacks being displaced for various reasons will not be able to flee to the suburbs. But that is and maybe should be another thread.

Back to the airport. It ain't gonna grow back anytime soon. But for being a local, it is awesome. As we know, I worked out of there last year. No traffic. No congestion. TSA has all the room they need to hassle the everyday traveler so no lines snaking all over. No rush hour like at JFK where you sit in a JBLU plane while Emirates gets priority. It is not as cozy as Rochester where I saw my car in the lot two different flights as we landed, but it is awfully close.

Build a remote airport? Brazil built a remote capital city: Brazilia. Didn't work too well.
didn't open the hinterlands except to slums.

Quote: Fleastiff

Build a remote airport?

What people don't realize that building a reliever airport is almost as difficult as building a remote airport. Dorval in Montreal was a disaster. Washington Dulles survived for decades on national government subsidies. To get around the restrictions on Washington National, airlines used to fly from National to Dulles and then go to their destination.

Dallas Fort Worth had the Wright Amendment of 1979 (a federal law that governed traffic at Dallas Love Field). It originally limited most non-stop flights from Love Field to destinations within Texas and neighboring states. Additional states were allowed in 1997 and 2005; the law was amended and partially repealed in 2006, then fully repealed in 2014.

Narita in Tokyo survived because for three decades international flights were not permitted to land at Haneda.

AFAIK there is no credible business model that will support Ivanpah airport at Las Vegas.

It isn't surprising that the legacy airlines fly from Las Vegas to their hubs. If you move them to Ivanpah, I think they will simply quit the city.

United Express: Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco
United Airlines: Chicago–O'Hare, Denver, Houston–Intercontinental, Los Angeles, Newark, San Francisco, Washington–Dulles
American Airlines: Charlotte, Chicago–O'Hare, Dallash, Los Angeles, Miami, JFK, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Washington–National
Delta Air Lines: Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York–JFK, Salt Lake City, Seattle/Tacoma

Why should they compete against Southwest when SW has the advantage of using the close in airport. The legacy carriers will simply abandon the city to the LCC.

Carrier Shares for June 2015 - May 2016
43.62% Southwest
10.78% American
8.81% Delta
8.27% United
7.05% Spirit
21.46% Other

Quote: Pacomartin

What people don't realize that building a reliever airport is almost as difficult as building a remote airport.

I think an alternate airport works only for LCCs and ULCCs that are committed to their business model.

Volaris and Interjet thrived at TLC for five years, but they bolted to MEX at the first opportunity. Partly this has to do with the expense of reaching TLC from Mex City. Partly it was the time it took for some people. It took me little time, but I live very near the highway.

From what I've read, both RyanAir and Spirit will use the smaller, cheaper airport every time.

To be fair to Interjet and Volaris, outside Mex City, there are no other cities or towns in the country with alternative airports. Unless you want to count Cuernavaca, Puebla, Queretaro and Toluca, whose alternate airport is MEX...