American Connection - RDU Possible Hub

Joshua949

New Member
Posted on Thu, Apr. 08, 2004

Fayetteville, N.C., Officials' Effort to Land More Airline Flights Stalls

By Paul Woolverton, The Fayetteville Observer, N.C. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Apr. 8--RALEIGH, N.C. - Efforts to bring more commercial airline flights to Fayetteville, Moore County and four other communities in North Carolina have stalled, said several officials involved in the plan.

"We're not any further along than we were six months ago," said Brad Whited, director of Fayetteville Regional Airport.

The effort can't proceed because of a contract that American Airlines has with its pilots' labor union, said Harold Garner, chairman of the Moore County Airport Authority.

The contract limits how often American Airlines can hire outside companies to fly under American's name and airline reservations code, said Garner, who is a retired American Airlines pilot.

This is called "code sharing" in the airline industry.

The code share being pursued in North Carolina would have American partner with Corporate Airlines of Smyrna, Tenn. Corporate's planes, painted to look like American's, would funnel passengers from the six small cities and towns to Raleigh-Durham International Airport to connect to other flights. In the airline reservations system, Corporate's flights would appear to be American flights.

"For all practical purposes it's an American airplane," Garner said.

Garner, Whited and representatives from the other airports seeking more air service attended a meeting at the Raleigh-Durham airport Wednesday morning to discuss the plan's status.

Fayetteville, Moore County, Wilmington, New Bern, Kinston and Hickory, have formed a consortium to get the air service and have a $1.2 million federal grant to help them. Fayetteville, Wilmington and New Bern have some commercial flights; Moore County, Kinston and Hickory have none.

American is trying to get a waiver so it can code share with Corporate in North Carolina, said Douglas Caldwell, president of Corporate Airlines. "Once they get this waiver, then we will code-share" and can start the flights, he said.

Corporate could forego code sharing and fly to the six cities under its own name and reservation code. But the lack of a code share with American would make it much harder to sell Corporate's flights. Code-shared flights on other airlines, such as Delta and US Airways, would show up first to people booking the flights, he said.

American is negotiating with the Allied Pilots Association to get permission to code share for flights to Raleigh-Durham International, said American spokesman Tim Wagner.

"We just have not worked out the issue yet," Wagner said.

If the Corporate-American code share can't work out, Garner said, the consortium will look for other ways to add commercial air service.
 
Well it used to work. Corpex used to Feed Midway at RDU, and had good sucess and got a good reputation with locals. I think itll work, and used to in the past. American Eagle used to fly to places like OAJ, just for you MTSuer, ISO, ILM etc. At the time the RDU hub was bigger, but it still can be a success on a 19 seat scale.
 
Yeah, it did work. Remember, OAJ had two carriers at one time (peeing in the tall cotton, as my Mother would say...
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). I think that if they can maintain the loads, they should go for it. When I was living in jacksonville I wasn't willing to spend the extra $350 to fly out of OAJ when I could drive 2 hours to Raleigh. These days, you can get a round-trip out of PGV to BNA for not much more than you could from RDU to BNA. That's going to be the challenge, I think...convincing the cutomer base that it's worth the expense.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Yeah, it did work. Remember, OAJ had two carriers at one time (peeing in the tall cotton, as my Mother would say...
grin.gif
). I think that if they can maintain the loads, they should go for it. When I was living in jacksonville I wasn't willing to spend the extra $350 to fly out of OAJ when I could drive 2 hours to Raleigh. These days, you can get a round-trip out of PGV to BNA for not much more than you could from RDU to BNA. That's going to be the challenge, I think...convincing the cutomer base that it's worth the expense.

[/ QUOTE ]

Used to be three. ASA E120S, EAGLE 360s, and USAir Mainline...my how its gone downhill!!
 
Yeah, it's incredible!!! I used to wonder what the jetway was there for, and then I learned that a little before I got there, there had been regular DC-9's coming through!!!

Have you heard about the latest battle at the airport there? They're trying to keep a Skydiving operator from moving in (they're convinced that a skydiving operation will keep airline service out).
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. If anybody wonders why airports don't grow, this is why!!!
 
It pretty much looks like AA is after a "mini-hub" at RDU once again. They have added lots of Eagle flights in the two years I've lived in the area and are adding more. They'll be up to 85 flights a day (Mainline, which is just ORD, DFW, MIA, Eagle going all over the place, and Connection to STL) here soon and a CorpEx short range operation would probably break 100. Apparently an RDU base is soon in coming for Eagle, something a lot of senior Eagle pilots are looking forward to, I guess.
 
I was talking to my mom earlier today when I was out at the observation park at RDU watching the AA 777 land & a couple ours later take-off. That thing is cool. Anyway, what I was saying was that my mom told me something about Eagle possible making RDU a hub for them. That would be really nice I believe. When I was out filming most of the planes that I shot were Eagle. I also noticed a nice looking BBJ come rolling in. Let's just say that's my plane.
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Josh
 
[ QUOTE ]
"For all practical purposes it's an American airplane," Garner said.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure it is..... Just like American is feeding AA Connection and not the other way around....whatever.

This has been rumored for months. Don't believe it till it happens. SAN rumored to be wasthisclose to a base a few years ago too.
 
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