Flight Reductions at NYC and WAS and Amtrak

[Septa9739]

The FAA, due to extreme staff shortages at some of the largest US airports, is “encouraging” airlines to cut about 10% of flights out of New York. Washington D.C. is also affected. Presumably short haul flights will go away disproportionately. Will AMTRAK be able to capitalize on this? Or will Bus companies? Maybe cars will win out? I think due in large part to capacity issues already being seen in the NEC (where more and more Regionals are running with 10 cars in April) AMTRAK may not be able to handle too much of a boost to the NEC, but State Supported corridors (especially the Keystone and Empire) may be able to handle more slack. High fares on the NEC may push more PHL-NYP intercity traffic onto the SEPTA/NJT route.

 

[jis]

The FAA, due to extreme staff shortages at some of the largest US airports, is “encouraging” airlines to cut about 10% of flights out of New York. Washington D.C. is also affected. Presumably short haul flights will go away disproportionately. Will AMTRAK be able to capitalize on this? Or will Bus companies? Maybe cars will win out? I think due in large part to capacity issues already being seen in the NEC (where more and more Regionals are running with 10 cars in April) AMTRAK may not be able to handle too much of a boost to the NEC, but State Supported corridors (especially the Keystone and Empire) may be able to handle more slack. High fares on the NEC may push more PHL-NYP intercity traffic onto the SEPTA/NJT route.

At least United is planning a 10% reduction in number of departures (438 -> 408), all of them on multiple departures per day routes, and almost all of them in the form of substitution of larger capacity equipment on the remaining flight. Number of available seats reduction will be very minimal. For example they will reduce EWR - DCA flights from 18 per day to 10 per day. All of the reduction appears to be in Regional Jet flights, many of them 50 seater CRJs.

 

[Anderson]

The FAA, due to extreme staff shortages at some of the largest US airports, is “encouraging” airlines to cut about 10% of flights out of New York. Washington D.C. is also affected. Presumably short haul flights will go away disproportionately. Will AMTRAK be able to capitalize on this? Or will Bus companies? Maybe cars will win out? I think due in large part to capacity issues already being seen in the NEC (where more and more Regionals are running with 10 cars in April) AMTRAK may not be able to handle too much of a boost to the NEC, but State Supported corridors (especially the Keystone and Empire) may be able to handle more slack. High fares on the NEC may push more PHL-NYP intercity traffic onto the SEPTA/NJT route.

Amtrak will probably see some bumps on the margins. One thing to bear in mind, however, is that EWR, LGA, and JFK get a lot of connecting traffic (I regularly run my flights from VA to FL via NYC because of the really nice airline lounges there, plus NYC-MCO/FLL being "meal flights" on Delta).

The airlines could probably fix a lot of the resulting capacity pressure by nudging connections away from NYC: AA has PHL (and DCA, though that's mostly only going to be good for moving LGA flights); DL has BOS, DTW, and ATL (and RDU's a focus city); and UA has IAD (and arguably ORD). The main thing they might want/need to do in order to make this work would be to fiddle with faring restrictions (e.g. DL could add BOS, DTW, and/or ATL as an option for some routings that might normally disallow them as a connection; alternatively, they could pull NYC as a legal connection and sub the others on some fares). Taking an example, here's Delta's allowed faring for BOS-WAS:

1. BOS-CVG/DTT/NYC/RDU-WAS

Stripping out NYC from that list (the route is run nonstop, after all) wouldn't utterly complicate things.

Here's another example, BOS-RIC (BOS-ORF is identical):

1. BOS-DTT/NYC-RIC

If they were to re-allow BOS-ATL-ORF/RIC (this was permissible pre-pandemic, up until DL "hubbed up" Boston, probably due to ORF-NYC being split between JFK and LGA and making connections "touchy") and add in BOS-CVG-ORF/RIC (regardless of any nominal routing-length violations), that could divert some traffic (even without disallowing NYC as a connection point).

 

[allanorn]

The airlines could probably fix a lot of the resulting capacity pressure by nudging connections away from NYC: AA has PHL (and DCA, though that's mostly only going to be good for moving LGA flights); DL has BOS, DTW, and ATL (and RDU's a focus city); and UA has IAD (and arguably ORD). The main thing they might want/need to do in order to make this work would be to fiddle with faring restrictions (e.g. DL could add BOS, DTW, and/or ATL as an option for some routings that might normally disallow them as a connection; alternatively, they could pull NYC as a legal connection and sub the others on some fares).

UA could also reactivate CLE instead of pushing everyone to IAD; CLE was a hub for ex-CO. The problem is EWR is such a massive hub for United that routing around it becomes a challenge for connecting flights, especially to Europe. (I guess UA could route those through ORD if they have capacity there.) DL could route some flights through CVG; I guess AA could push more flights to CLT if they had to move flights from PHL, or even STL if they were completely out of options.

Depending on how long the staffing shortage goes it's plausible that it won't do much for Amtrak except for last-minute business fares because some of the NYC-DC air shuttles would be consolidated to make the train more convenient and competitive. A fair number of travelers will be on itineraries with connections that are booked a fair bit in advance, so it might just be easier to get larger planes on the routes and shuffle connections around short-term.

 

[west point]

As I understand it and from past experience the ATC traffic controller shortage is spread out to various locations nationwide. Part of the problem IMO is the wage system. Back 20 year ago, Controllers who worked at towers and local radar stations for towers get less than nationwide enroute controllers. That may be the reason for airports cutting back. We do not know if just NYCity or others are affected as well.

 

[jis]

UA could also reactivate CLE instead of pushing everyone to IAD; CLE was a hub for ex-CO. The problem is EWR is such a massive hub for United that routing around it becomes a challenge for connecting flights, especially to Europe. (I guess UA could route those through ORD if they have capacity there.) DL could route some flights through CVG; I guess AA could push more flights to CLT if they had to move flights from PHL, or even STL if they were completely out of options.

Depending on how long the staffing shortage goes it's plausible that it won't do much for Amtrak except for last-minute business fares because some of the NYC-DC air shuttles would be consolidated to make the train more convenient and competitive. A fair number of travelers will be on itineraries with connections that are booked a fair bit in advance, so it might just be easier to get larger planes on the routes and shuffle connections around short-term.

UA's problem in EWR is not the big birds, it is the tiny 50 seaters. They can easily meet their goal by slashing their collection of little Express flights.