"On the Whole, They'd Rather Fly From Philadelphia"

Sunday, March 13, 2005

On the Whole, They'd Rather Fly From Philadelphia
By PATRICK McGEEHAN 
The New York (NY) Times


One of the luxuries of living in Manhattan is having easy access to three
major airports, but Angel Hess plans to pass them by this week when he takes
off for Arizona. 

Instead, he'll make a two-hour road trip to Philadelphia International
Airport. Like a growing number of New York area residents, he has discovered
that airfares often are significantly lower in Philadelphia, the latest
Northeastern city to be shaken up by the arrival of Southwest Airlines.
"It's a lot cheaper," said Mr. Hess, a 26-year-old fashion photographer.

Now that he has a $260 round-trip ticket to Flagstaff, all he needs is a
ride to Philadelphia. If none is offered, he said, he will take a bus from
Chinatown. Even with a $20 round-trip bus fare, he said, he would save about
$100 by flying from Philadelphia. But other price-conscious travelers are
finding even bigger discounts there.

Airfares have been dropping faster in Philadelphia than in any other big
city, fueling a boom in traffic at the congested airport there. Despite its
reputation for delays and baggage difficulties, Philadelphia International
is now attracting more passengers for domestic flights than any of New
York's three major airports - La Guardia, Kennedy International or Newark
Liberty International.

Transportation officials say they do not know how many of those travelers
are being lured away by lower fares, but they concede that New Yorkers are
not immune to what is known in the travel industry as the Southwest effect.
When Southwest Airlines, the king of the low-fare carriers, arrives in a new
city, it drives down airfares and adds traffic.

Southwest started operating in Philadelphia in May. After holding steady for
six years, the number of travelers passing through the airport, which is
owned by the city, rose more than 15 percent last year to 28.5 million, said
T. Jeffrey Shull, the airport chief of staff.

The trend would merely be an extension of the shift that has been under way
in New York since JetBlue Airways set up shop at Kennedy five years ago. In
what could be called the JetBlue shuffle, travelers from all over the region
have been going to Kennedy to fly on JetBlue's planes, best known for having
satellite-TV screens mounted in the backs of all of their seats.

Tim Rose, the president of Flyte Tyme Limousine in Mahwah, N.J., questioned
the sanity of local residents who would venture to Philadelphia for a cheap
flight. "Why would anybody do that?" he asked.

But he admitted that, despite living within a half-hour of Newark and being
a gold-level frequent flier on Continental Airlines, he regularly chances
New York City traffic to fly JetBlue to southwest Florida, where he has a
second home. With JetBlue as its main drawing card, Kennedy grew more than
twice as fast as La Guardia or Newark last year, and even faster than
Philadelphia International. Kennedy's total passenger count, including
international passengers, rose 18.2 percent in 2004, while La Guardia's rose
8.7 percent and Newark's 8.7 percent, according to the Port Authority of New
York and New Jersey, which operates the three airports.

The changing traffic patterns at the airports around New York illustrate the
powerful lure of lower fares. Ten years ago, Newark handled 5 million more
domestic passengers annually than Kennedy and 3.3 million more than
Philadelphia International. By last year, the deck had been reshuffled and
Philadelphia was on top.

In 2004, 11.7 million domestic passengers boarded planes at Philadelphia,
according to figures released last week by the federal Bureau of
Transportation Statistics. La Guardia had 11.5 million and Newark had 11.4
million. Kennedy was gaining fast, with almost 10 million domestic
passengers, or almost 5,000 more each day in 2004 than in 2003, the
statistics show.

David Barger, the president of JetBlue, said the surge of traffic in
Philadelphia was inevitable once Southwest prompted US Airways, the dominant
carrier there, to slash its fares last spring. "There's tremendous
competition going on down in Philadelphia, and that's going to be very
beneficial for consumers," he said.

Mr. Barger said JetBlue had been attracting customers from as far as 100
miles away and from as far south as Trenton. About 10 percent of the people
flying JetBlue from Kennedy live in New Jersey, he said. 

Mr. Shull, the chief of staff at Philadelphia, said Southwest clearly was
stimulating additional travel by residents of the Philadelphia area. But, he
added, "It would be misguided to believe that none of this traffic is coming
from another market."

Philadelphia's gains came in spite of its airport's poor performance. During
the Christmas holidays last year, US Airways suffered a service meltdown,
concentrated in Philadelphia, that left almost 50,000 passengers stranded
and thousands of pieces of luggage lost or damaged. In January, the airport
ranked last in on-time performance, with fewer than 6 in 10 flights arriving
on time.

Anthony R. Coscia, chairman of the Port Authority, said he did not believe
Newark was losing customers in significant numbers to Philadelphia
International, but he acknowledged that JetBlue was drawing New Jersey
residents to Kennedy - himself included, though he noted that fares had not
been the determining factor. JetBlue flew to the airport closest to their
destination.

He said the Port Authority had been concentrating on improving Newark's
terminals and parking facilities as well as its offering of international
flights, a traditional weakness. Last year, Newark's international traffic
rose 15.5 percent to almost 8.9 million passengers.

Malcolm Frankel, who runs A-1 Limousine in Princeton, N.J., said more of his
customers, whether traveling for business or pleasure, have been switching
from Newark to Philadelphia International.

"A lot of corporations that were using Newark are now changing and using
Philadelphia because of the price," Mr. Frankel said.

Two weeks ago, he said, three couples from Basking Ridge, N.J., and bound
for Orlando were willing to bypass Newark for a 150-mile round-trip to
Philadelphia because lower airfares more than offset the cost of the longer
car ride, he said.

Before Southwest came along, Philadelphia was an expensive airport, with
fares about 20 percent higher than the national average, Mr. Shull said. But
fares have fallen to slightly less than the national average, as measured in
dollars per mile, he said.

The latest survey by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics found that
airfares in Philadelphia dropped more than 15 percent from the third quarter
of 2003 to the third quarter of 2004. In the New York-Newark market, fares
fell less then 3 percent during that period, matching the national trend.
But fares have been declining faster in several other Eastern cities that
are served by either Southwest or JetBlue, including Boston; Washington;
Providence, R.I.; and Hartford. Over the last decade, the cost of flying
fell about 10 percent in Boston and Providence, and almost 6 percent in
Philadelphia, while it rose 2.2 percent in the New York-Newark market, the
statistics show.

Elisabeth Iafelice, a legal assistant in Point Pleasant, N.J., has noticed.
In May, she and her husband plan to fly to Aruba from Philadelphia, though
the airport is about 25 miles farther from their home than Newark is.

"I would pay more to fly out of Philly, but I never have to," said Mrs.
Iafelice, who goes to Aruba twice a year. The fare from Philadelphia is
usually $100 lower than the fare from Newark, a savings that really mattered
in November when they took eight friends and relatives with them, she said.

The Iafelices usually drive the day before their flight to a hotel near the
Philadelphia airport, where they can stay overnight and park for a week for
a grand total of $69, she said. They could do the same at Newark for $70,
but they would have to sleep in their car.


 Do you have an opinion about this story?
Share it with other readers in our CAA Discussion Forums

http://www.californiaaviation.org/dcfp/dcboard.php


*****************************************