Pittsburgh Airport: From hub airport to point-to-point in three decades

Airline service, once dominated by Allegheny/US Airways, has declined accordingly. Pittsburgh Airport and its business community have responded actively and done much to retrieve lost ground on key routes.

Pittsburgh in 1980: dominated by Allegheny and short-haul

In 1980, deregulation was in its second year and the airline industry was beginning to reshape itself. The aviation market in Pittsburgh, while diverse, was much beholden to Allegheny Airlines, an airline that in late 1979 had rebranded itself as USAir, but was still designated by its previous code AL. The "US" would come later.

Frequent flyer programs were still a year away and the concept of alliances was almost 20 years distant. In other words, air transport was a very different industry from what we now know.

Weekly nonstop service from Pittsburgh: Feb-1980

To	AL	TW	UA	EA	NW	AA	PI	ND	BN
Akron	13
Albany	6
Allentown	32
Atlanta				49
Binghamton	21
Birmingham	12
Boston	25	21
Buffalo	19	7
Charleston, WV	19
Charlotte				28
Chicago	66	18	28
Cincinnati	12	19
Cleveland	38		21	10
Columbus	33	13
Dallas						21
Dayton	27	20
Denver		7	14
Detroit			7	21	20
Elmira	20
Erie	33
Ft. Lauderdale		7	14	14
Ft. Myers			7
Greensboro				7
Harrisburg	46	7
Hartford	26	7
Houston	19	7				13
Huntington	7
Indianapolis	21	14
Kansas City									10
Las Vegas		7	7
Lexington, KY	13
Los Angeles		13	14
Louisville	13	7
Memphis	6
Miami		7	14	7
Minneapolis	7
Nashville	19
New Orleans	8
New York*	59	60			6
Norfolk	7		6
Orlando	21	7	7	10
Parkersburg	20
Philadelphia	82	20
Phoenix	7	7
Providence		7
Raleigh	14
Roanoke							14
Rochester, NY	26
St. Louis	26	7
San Francisco		6	7
Sarasota			7
Syracuse	14	7
Tampa	14	7	14	14
Toledo	12
Toronto			7					10
Washington*	57	7			24
West Palm	14		7
Wilkes Barre	21
Youngstown			14

Source: OAG *all airports

Symbolically, of the seven airline codes displayed above, only two remain in 2010, UA and AA. All the rest have disappeared, the most recent being NW.

There are lots of other differences as well:

• Service to Atlanta was exclusively on Eastern-no Delta
• United was well represented in the Florida market. Today very few UA flights are destined for the Sunshine State;
• Longhaul nonstops were a tiny fraction of the total number of flights offered. There were more weekly nonstops to Harrisburg (178 miles away) than to all of California. The published one-way fare to Harrisburg yielded USD3.40 per mile while the fare to LAX brought in USD0.13. Easy to see where the money was, if you could sell it;
• The number of cities served that are in near proximity is astonishing by today's standards. United operated 2 daily nonstops to Youngstown, 57 miles from Pittsburgh. The one-way economy fare was USD33-41 in first. In 2010, Youngstown has no air service.
• In stark contrast to our RJ era, TW operated B707s to Buffalo (186 miles) and Philadelphia (268 miles).

However, these features were not atypical of many airports at the time. And the possible transition to a US Airways hub is already a reasonable outcome.

2000: US Airways' hub entrenched

By February 2000, US Airways had a full-fledged hub operating at Pittsburgh. In 1992 a brand new terminal with 76 gates had replaced the former structure and the aviation scene in the city was enormously changed. There were daily cross-border and European flights; at one time Gatwick was served as well.

Nonstop service from Pittsburgh: February 2000
Akron		Ft. Myers		Orange County
Albany		Ft. Wayne		Orlando
Allentown		Frankfurt		Ottawa
Asheville		Hartford		Paris
Atlanta	DL/NJ	Houston	CO	Philadelphia
Binghamton		Huntington WV		Phoenix
Boston		Indianapolis		Portland ME
Buffalo	NJ	Ithica		Providence
Burlington		Johnstown		Raleigh
Champaign		Kalamazoo		Richmond
Charleston SC		Kansas City		Roanoke
Charleston WV		Lansing		Rochester
Charlotte		Los Angeles		St. Louis	TW
Charlottesville		Lexington KY		San Diego
Chicago	UA/AA/NJ	London ON		San Francisco
Cincinnati	DL	Louisville		San Juan
Cleveland	CO	Lynchburg		Seattle
Columbia SC		Manchester NH		South Bend
Columbus		Miami		St. College
Dallas	AA	Milwaukee	XY	Syracuse
Dayton		Minneapolis	NW	Tampa
Denver		Montreal		Toledo
Detroit	NW	Myrtle Beach		Toronto	AC
Elmira		Nashville		Tri Cities
Erie		New Orleans		Washington*	UA
Evansville		New York*	DL/TW/CO/AA	Westchester
Flint		Norfolk		W. Palm Beach
Ft. Lauderdale		Nashville		Wilkes-Barre

Source: OAG
*NYC all airports. WAS: US serves IAD/BWI/DCA; UA only serves IAD

As noted, the airport was almost entirely dependent on US Airways, as other carriers did not even compete from all of their hubs. United presented no challenge to either San Francisco or Denver, American did not operate to Miami, despite a growing presence there, and Delta chose to not link Pittsburgh with its Salt Lake City operation.

Interestingly, we will see similar situations develop at other hubs that eventually declined in importance. Widespread networks were established to make the hub a desirable connecting point for a great many travelers, either by adding cities that had no viable point-to-point traffic or by so saturating the market that when the hub carrier recalibrated, the hub city found itself with no service to important destinations: a classic example of too many eggs in one basket.

Today: The dangers of airline concentration

The results of US Airways' downsizing are readily evident in the average figures shown for Nov-2009. The number of nonstop destinations has fallen from 84 to 38 and the total daily departures, in the neighborhood of 600 at the hub's peak, has been reduced to 149-down by about 75%.

Pittsburgh Airport average departures per day per airline: Nov-2009

Average daily departures
American Air Canada JetBlue Continental Delta American	9 2 3 14 18 10	Northwest USA 3000 United US Airways Southwest Myrtle Beach Direct Air Midwest Express	12 1 14 44 19 1 4
Average departures per day			149
Total airports served non-stop			38

Source: Allegheny County Airport Authority

While US still has the highest number of daily departures, it represents less than a third of the 2000 total. The good news is that space has been created for AirTran, JetBlue and Southwest, that have not only filled some of the void but have also helped to significantly reduce fares at the airport. Nonetheless, the process has been, and continues to be, a painful one for the city and its residents.

Declines still continue in Nov-2009, years after the big-time exit of US. The year-to-date figures (to Nov-2009) show a passenger drop of 8.1% and 12.5% fewer operations. That pattern has been consistent since 2001, the last time the airport showed a passenger increase of +0.6%.

From its peak in 1997 of almost 20.8 million passengers Pittsburgh Airport will likely register less than 8 million in 2009.

Source: Allegheny County Airport Authority

The community strikes back

Ken Zapinski, who heads up the Allegheny Conference's transportation and infrastructure program, has some interesting observations on the impact of this change on the business community.

The Allegheny Conference on Community Development is a business/civic leadership group that works on economic development and quality of life issues in the Pittsburgh region. In 2003, after US Airways' first bankruptcy, the Allegheny Conference joined with the Allegheny County Executive (ie, elected leadership) and the Allegheny County Airport Authority to form the Regional Air Service Partnership. The Partnership is the multi-agency vehicle that has worked on the air service issue; cognizant of the fact that nonstop air service, even to important destinations, could no longer be taken for granted.

While the airport suffered mightily in the US Airways pulldown, most of those passengers were actually in transit and were not crucial to the economic health of the region. But the effect of the carrier's reductions was to cost the city nonstop service to some important points.

Consequently, the Conference's mandate was to see that nonstop service was maintained to key business destinations. They polled the business community to ascertain the cities that should be included in that list.

As noted earlier, some of the void had been filled by new generation operators that also brought lower fares. As a result, until 2008, origin and destination traffic in fact increased, even as overall traffic fell precipitously. But then, like most other places, the 2008 oil price rise and subsequent economic morass changed all that as well.

How effective action can actually work

Of primary concern to the business community was the loss of nonstop flights to California and to Europe. The Conference effectively made its case to United, presenting documented research that proved to the carrier that services to both Los Angeles and San Francisco would be profitable. The airline has found that to be true and operates daily Airbuses to both cities.

The resumption of European service was a more complex process. With no dominant carrier able to feed a local network, there was no clear candidate for the operation. However, in 2009 the Allegheny Conference entered a risk-sharing partnership with Delta to operate a nonstop flight to SkyTeam's Paris hub. The Conference created a fund of $9 million to subsidize any financial shortfall. The agreement expires in June 2011 but the Pittsburgh business community favors its continuance and feels that it has been a positive outcome for all.

According to SkyTeam, the overall transatlantic increase from Pittsburgh actually exceeds the seats provided by the Paris flight, indicating a knock-on effect for the alliance. The flight also has broad community support with 75% of the point-of-sale tickets being issued on the US end. With Delta's domestic feed in Pittsburgh being virtually nil, almost all of the onward passengers connect on the European end.

The city believes itself to be well-served by the efforts of the Conference. They realised early on that staff reductions at airlines would mean fewer resources for the carriers' route research and analysis. The Conference filled that void for carriers and presented them with data that supported the economic viability of service-in Delta's case putting local money on the table as well.

Achieving a new level of sustainable service

Pittsburgh will never return to its previous hub glory-days. There is even doubt that it will ever achieve the status of a "focus city". But the business community has shown how effective action can successfully maintain a level of service that is vital to the region's economic welfare and growth. And while the airport is too big for its current role in the national grid, it continues to meet the needs of its constituents: a success by any measure.