Skybus - low cost airline flying to 3rd-tier airports - cool
Monday, March 10th, 2008For a while last year I was going to Columbus, OH every week for business and I couldn’t help but notice the huge ambitions of local airline startup Skybus. I have never flown them, but they seem like they are doing interesting things. The most interesting, in my opinion, is flying to really unusual airports such as Chicago/ Gary Airport(GYY), Portsmouth NH (near Boston, Portland and Manchester), Wilmington DE (ILG) which is near Philly and obviously Wilmington, and Niagra Airport (near Toronto).
Airport fees are an overlooked but significant part of airline economics. For example, they were 5.7% of revenue for Southwest in 2007 and 6.3% of revenue for JetBlue in 2007. In many cases Skybus will be the first commercial airline serving these 3rd-tier airports and it seems as though they will get bargain-basement rates. For example, Niagra Airport advertises rates 20% those of JFK for a 737 or A320. Part of the business model of the first discounters (Southwest, Jetblue, Airtran) was flying out of 2nd-tier airports such as Midway (Chicago), Manchester and Providence (Boston), Love (Dallas), Hobby (Houston) and Oakland (San Francisco) where there were lower landing fees and less congestion. Those airports have grown a lot and are now facing some of the problems faced by larger airports.
I am a big fan of alternate airports here in Chicago and I prefer to use Midway over O’Hare since it is 30 minutes by EL vs. 60, 45 minutes in traffic vs.90 and 20 minutes in no traffic vs. 35 from where I live in downtown Chicago. It also has more on-time departures, better dining (potbelly!), and less cancellations (0.02% vs. 0.12% of flights in 2007). I am not sure that I would use Gary since it is quite a bit further than Midway, but if it had less delays and cheaper flights I might. It is also only 45 - 60 minutes away by the excellent South Shore train.
I found some interesting data comparing landing fees at many of the world’s airports. The data was in a PPT published by the Air Traffic Research Society.
Landing Fees for a 747 at North America Airports
Landing Fees for a 747 at Asian Airports
Landing Fees for a 747 at European Airports
Landing Fees for an Airbus 320 (smaller plane, like a 737) at Asian Airports
Landing Fees for A320 At European Airports
Landing Fees for A320 At North American Airports
Per-Passenger Terminal Fees for North America Airports
