October 28, 2020

Southwest Announces Schedule for O’Hare and Colorado Springs Flights

1 Southwest Airlines announced its schedule for both Chicago/O’Hare and Colorado Springs when the two airports join the airline’s route map in early 2021.

Southwest is the dominant carrier at Chicago/Midway and will be making its first foray into O’Hare when it begins service — on Valentine’s Day, naturally — February 14. From O’Hare, the LUV airline will serve five destinations:

  • Nashville (4x daily)
  • Baltimore (4x daily)
  • Denver (6x daily)
  • Dallas/Love Field (4x daily)
  • Phoenix (2x daily)

In addition to its O’Hare service, Southwest will also begin flying from Colorado Springs (COS) with 13 daily flights to five destinations on March 11. From Colorado Springs, Southwest will fly to:

  • Denver (4x daily)
  • Las Vegas (2x daily)
  • Phoenix (2x daily)
  • Dallas/Love Field (3x daily)
  • Chicago/Midway (2x daily)

In case you were wondering, that flight from Colorado Springs to Denver is a mere 73 miles which makes it a very atypical Southwest route. We’ll have more on this tomorrow on crankyflier.com.


Delta Manages to Decrease SkyMiles Value Even Further

2 You gotta give Delta credit — instead of trying to change the narrative that SkyMiles don’t have much value, it chooses to double down and prove that it’s true. Somehow Delta has found a way to further devalue SkyMiles, increasing the cost for long-haul awards both on its own and partner flights.

Delta, which was the first to remove its award chart for mileage redemptions, increased the minimum price for a one-way award to Europe by 40% in economy and 27% in Delta One. A one-way SkyMiles redemption to Europe now starts at 35,000 SkyMiles, an increase from the 25,000 it cost as recently as yesterday. Even worse is up front, where the entry level for Delta One across the pond is 95,000 SkyMiles, a significant increase from the previous 75,000.

Prices to Asia were raised similarly with a 23% increase in economy from 32,500 to 40,000. Delta One went from 85,000 to 102,500, a 21% increase.

The only real surprise here is that Delta didn’t do this sooner or devalue SkyMiles more. The day of a 200,000 price floor on a business class redemption to Europe isn’t that far away. SkyMiles have always had the least value of the legacy carriers in the United States and Delta manages to make them worth less and less every couple of years. It’s a good reminder that it’s never a good idea to horde any mileage currency, especially SkyMiles. They will only ever decrease in value as time goes by.


Allegiant Beats Q3 Earnings Expectations, Operation Turns Cash Positive

3 Allegiant Air announced its Q3 earnings late on Wednesday, posting a loss of $29 million for Q3, beating expectations thanks to a remarkable cash positive September — excluding a one-time $5 million charge — to close the quarter.

Allegiant posted $201 million in gross revenue, 54% less than Q3 a year ago, with operating expenses down 36% to $234 million. Moving forward, the airline expects to reduce its fourth quarter capacity by 15% from Q4 last year but will adjust as needed. Allegiant flew 6.5% less in Q3 2020 than 2019 and had a load factor of 57.4%, its highest since March. The airline is doing so well (relatively) that CEO Maury Gallagher said he was bored. To create a challenge, Maury will now dump all his effort into the Allegiant nonstop family fun centers which are unlikely to ever make money.

Allegiant ends the quarter with $709 million in cash. It has reduced its aircraft fleet down to 93 planes it expects to operate by the end of 2020. Allegiant moves into Q4 and then 2021 looking for new ways to drive revenue to make up for reduced capacity. It mentions in its report that it was intrigued by our idea of a charge to sit a non-smoking section from Monday’s Cranky Daily.  


Paris/CDG is Europe’s Busiest Airport So Far in 2020

4 For the first time in its history, Paris/CDG has overtaken London/Heathrow as the busiest airport in Europe based on passenger count. With the caveat that nothing in 2020 is real – remember that Anchorage was the world’s busiest airport for a time this spring – it is a historic achievement for the Paris airport.

The 19.3 million passengers that have flown through CDG this year narrowly eclipsed Heathrow’s total of 19 million. 19.3 million represents a 67% drop for CDG which had seen 58 million passengers in the first nine months of 2019, while Heathrow’s number is a 69% drop from 61 million at this point last year.

Officials at Heathrow are currently projecting just 22.6 million travelers next year, less than 25% of the number of passengers who used the airport in 2019. The airport is currently losing £5m a day and is cutting 500 jobs through redundancy.

Despite the dramatically reduced passenger count and number of flights operating at the airport, Heathrow officials don’t want to deprive the passengers who do come through the airport the true Heathrow experience. Passengers can still expect for their aircraft to park at a bus gate a great length from the terminal, long lines at customs and immigration and an exhausting maze through duty free shops on the way to your gate.


United Attempts to Finish 787 Polaris Retrofit

5 United Airlines is currently using the downtime provided by the pandemic to catch up on the retrofitting of its B787 aircraft to include the most up-to-date Polaris offering in business class. United introduced Polaris as its business class of the future in the summer of 2016.

United’s current goal is to have the Polaris installations complete on its 787-8’s by next summer and on its 787-9 aircraft by Summer 2022. That puts it on track to finish installing Polaris in all of its aircraft just in-time for Polaris to be considered outdated and a new business class product to be announced.

United currently has 804 aircraft in its fleet, and of that figure, 190 are widebodies. The airline wants to concentrate on its widebodies that will remain in the fleet after the pandemic and ensure they are all retrofitted with Polaris. With the focus on the 12 787-8’s to be finished by summer 2021 and the 35 787-9’s by summer 2022, its fleet of 16 B767-400’s could be on the chopping block.


Airline Potpourri

  • American has issued a travel waiver for nine Gulf Coast cities due to Hurricane Zeta. It has also cancelled flights in and out of Gulfport, MS (GPT) for today, October 28, with the expectation that service will resume tomorrow.
  • El Al resumed nonstop service from Tel Aviv to Miami this week, operating once weekly through November 15 and then increasing to 3x-weekly.
  • Icelandair plans to take delivery of three 737 MAX aircraft in the first half of 2021.
  • Turkish plans to operate to at least 80 destinations from its Istanbul hub by this December.
  • South African will be receiving a $641 million bailout from the South African government.
  • Wizz Air is adding three new destinations from its base in Cluj-Napoca (CLJ) in Romania. Service to Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden (FKB) (3x-weekly), Hamburg (HAM) (2x-weekly), and Cologne (CGN) (2x-weekly) will begin in June.

Andrew’s Moment of Levity

I was going to make a Periodic Table joke today but then I realized all the good ones argon.