"Pittsburgh Int'l Airport studies flight cuts elsewhere"

Saturday, August 14, 2004

Pittsburgh International Airport studies flight cuts elsewhere
Wants to see how other cities coped
By Mark Belko and Dan Fitzpatrick
The Pittsburgh (PA) Post-Gazette


With the November demise of nonstop service to Frankfurt and London,
will the "international" in Pittsburgh International Airport still
apply?

Technically, yes.

Oddly enough, being designated an international airport has nothing to
do with whether airlines fly nonstop to Europe, Asia or other parts of
the world from Pittsburgh. It simply means that the airport has customs
and immigration services available.

On that count, Pittsburgh qualifies.

But the answer to the larger question of whether the Pittsburgh airport
will remain truly international without nonstop service to Europe most
likely depends on your perspective.

While there's no doubt that the loss of Frankfurt and London flights
deals a blow to the region's image and its sizable collection of British
and German businesses, travelers still will be able to get virtually
anywhere in the world from Pittsburgh through connections at airports in
other cities.

And while there no longer will be nonstop service to Europe, Allegheny
County Airport Authority officials say Pittsburgh still will have
nonstop international flights -- to Mexico, the Caribbean and Canada,
which technically qualify as international destinations.

Even after its cutbacks Nov. 7, US Airways, through affiliate carriers,
still will offer four nonstop flights each day to Toronto. It also will
fly nonstop once a week to Cancun, Mexico, and San Juan, Puerto Rico,
according to the airport authority.

Air Canada also offers three nonstop daily flights to Toronto. And USA
3000 has two flights a week to Cancun, one to Aruba, and one or two a
week, depending on the season, to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

Nonetheless, that is much different than pre-Sept. 11, 2001, service
when the menu of international nonstop flights available to local
travelers through US Airways alone included Paris, Frankfurt, London,
Toronto, Montreal, Cancun and San Juan.

At the time, Pittsburgh was US Airways' largest hub. But with the
airline's bankruptcy and its ongoing transformation, Pittsburgh has lost
that status and has been designated a "focus city," with many nonstop
destinations falling away as a result.

The Frankfurt and London flights are among 20 being discontinued in
November. Another 16 are being dropped by October. The cutbacks are part
of a US Airways plan, announced last month, to eliminate one-third of
its nonstop flights from Pittsburgh.

That would leave the carrier with 240 daily flights to about 65
destinations, assuming others aren't cut this fall, compared with 373
daily flights to 102 cities in July.

After Thursday's announcement involving the London and Frankfurt
flights, Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato and airport
authority Executive Director Kent George, with the Allegheny Conference
on Community Development, vowed to find other carriers to fly nonstop to
Europe.

Local officials, hoping to replace the lost international flights, are
looking to the examples set by other cities that have recovered from
such losses.

One such example is Charlotte, N.C., which lost a connection in 1992
when Lufthansa pulled its service at Charlotte/Douglas International
Airport. The local chamber of commerce lured the same airline back in
March, convincing it to offer daily flights to Munich on top of a flight
US Airways already offers to Frankfurt.

Charlotte has 169 German firms employing about 10,000 people, and
officials there beat out Pittsburgh for the new flight by offering to
market the new connection in Germany and helping to research
international flight patterns out of Charlotte. Also, local businesses
pledged to fly Lufthansa.

Another city that bounced back recently from a loss in international
service is Portland, Ore., which lost its routes to Japan when Delta Air
Lines pulled them in 2001. The next year, however, Portland
International Airport officials convinced Lufthansa and Mexicana Air to
add new nonstop flights to Frankfurt and Guadalajara in March and May
2003, giving the city its first-ever nonstop connections to Europe and
Mexico.

Then, the Japanese connection, rejected by Delta for not being
cost-effective, returned in June when Northwest Airlines agreed to add a
nonstop trip to Tokyo. Japan, Oregon's largest trading partner, is to
Portland what Germany is to Pittsburgh. More than 100 Japanese companies
are in the Portland region, just as 101 German companies are in the
Pittsburgh region.

Portland officials presented Northwest with those statistics and
produced letters from the local companies willing to support the Tokyo
flight. Portland airport officials also waived landing and rental fees
for one year and remodeled gates and a passenger lounge for the
Minneapolis-based carrier. The same incentives were used to attract
Lufthansa and Mexicana.

British Airways, which offered nonstop service from Pittsburgh to London
for 14 years until dropping it in 1999, and Lufthansa are likely
candidates to get calls from local officials about replacing the US
Airways service. But spokespersons for both airlines said yesterday
neither had any plans to offer nonstop flights to Europe from
Pittsburgh.

Michael Boyd, a Colorado-based aviation consultant, predicted that it
would be "pretty tough" to entice another carrier to serve Europe,
particularly without the US Airways hub.

"I wouldn't say zero, but the chances are pretty slim right now," he
said. "To make it work, you have to have a connecting hub at one end or
the other."

Other experts argue, however, that rival carriers may warm to Pittsburgh
International now that US Airways is out of the way. Carriers with hubs
in Europe know Pittsburgh-area business travelers still need to cross
the Atlantic Ocean and connect to other cities across the continent.
Those carriers might be more willing to establish that connection from
Pittsburgh now that there is less competition for the passengers.

Airport authority officials have said they believed the Frankfurt route
was profitable. They said the load factors on the flight averaged 74
percent last year -- meaning the plane was three-quarters filled --
which was only slightly lower than the 76.5 percent average for
international flights industrywide.

But Boyd said the load factors could be high and the airline could still
lose money on the flight, depending on how much it was charging for the
seats. US Airways spokesman David Castelveter reiterated yesterday that
the flight lost money and didn't merit continuing, particularly with the
elimination of the hub.

"It's being eliminated because the market simply doesn't exist to fly
nonstop from Pittsburgh without the connecting feed," he said.


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