With the announcement of new flight reductions for 2010, American Airlines will be left with 36 flights departing daily from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, far fewer than the nearly 500 daily departures from the airport when American Airlines took over Trans World Airlines (TWA) less than 10 years ago.
After these cuts, non-stop service from St. Louis will no longer be available on any carrier to Austin, Texas; Nashville, Indianapolis; Wichita, Kan.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Madison, Wis.; Norfolk, Va.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; San Antonio, Texas; San Francisco; and Des Moines, Iowa. Non-stop service on American Airlines will cease to eight other cities by 2010 as well, though other carriers also offer non-stop service to these destinations.
American Airlines has cut down its St. Louis hub multiple times since TWA left St. Louis nearly eight years ago. Bill Mishk, former Vice President of Marketing and Planning for American Connection, American Airlines’ regional service, said that flight cuts should be foreseen.
“People fail to realize that flight service and flight availability is a function of economic development,” Mishk said. “In other words, if there is lots of economic development, the city will usually get lots of flights. When there is low economic development, the city will lose flights. And unfortunately, St. Louis has been losing company headquarters to other cities and the automotive industries have downsized hugely. This has been a major factor in the reduction of flights over the past few years.”
Local members of the community are aware of the reductions, and are planning ahead to make sure they are ready. Trent Bernard, who flies out of St. Louis on a weekly basis, is aware of the flight reductions and is making his travel plans accordingly.
“It will make traveling a lot more difficult, and extra time will have to be dedicated to layovers,” Bernard said. “Currently I fly American about half the time, but I will probably fly more on Southwest and other carriers once the new flight cuts go into effect.”
Many students who travel know the possibility of long layovers between transfer flights, so this forces their families to reconsider traveling. The flight cuts ultimately could change some students’ college choices, which may depend on the access to flights back to St. Louis.
“There are fewer flights which mean more layovers in airports,” junior Sarah Graeber said. “This makes me not want to go to college far away, as travel to and from college would be too hard and take too much time and effort.”
Sophomore Carmen Ribaudo agrees that flight cuts will make travel a headache. Every year she flies the direct flight on American Airlines to San Francisco, which will cease to exist in 2010.
“I fly on the direct flight to San Francisco every year,” Ribaudo said. “We probably will not be traveling there as often as we would spend more time in waiting around for connecting flights which is very inconvenient, and would make the travel much more difficult.”
Though it will make traveling more difficult, from a business perspective, American Airlines may have made a correct decision in cutting flights.
“It was absolutely the correct choice for American to pull out, as flights are regularly half full and fares have come down due to price competition and the recession,” Mishk said. “Combine the lower loads and lower average airfare and the flights are not making any money. I agree, it will be difficult to get to places, but it was a smart financial decision by American.”
“In my experience, American can’t even fill the small jets when they fly, with the planes only flying at 50% to 75% capacity, so it’s understandable why they are cutting so many flights,” Bernard said.
St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay disagreed, calling American Airlines’ move a “bad business decision,” according to his blog. He said that American Airlines, in cutting more than half of their flights each day, will lose customer confidence and people will just give other airlines their business rather than American Airlines.
Though it may be unlikely that American Airlines will step back in the immediate future, other airlines may fill the gap American Airlines left in abandoning so many routes. Southwest Airlines is picking up two routes American originally abandoned, as well as direct service to Minneapolis and Boston, though service to Boston will be picked back up by American Airlines’ regional service.
“Even if other airlines do pick up the slack, there is no way that an airline is going to start flying to all these places that American dropped, unless there is much more economic development in the city,” Mishk said. “The backfill, a term used to describe another airline coming in to pick up lost flights, will be muted.”
“I am not expecting American to pull back to St. Louis, as they seem to want to concentrate on the bigger cities like Dallas and Chicago,” Bernard said. “I think Southwest will fill the gap, as I know they made a great decision in filling a gap this year in opening service to Minneapolis.”
For the time being however, the citizens of St. Louis will have to be content with connecting to other cities through other airlines when they fly.