With Space To Spare, Pittsburgh International Draws Corporate Jet Carrier

Pittsburgh International Airport’s status as a former hub facility with space to spare helped draw OneJet, a new corporate jet carrier seeking to gain a foothold inside Concourse D.

“That’s one of the reasons Pittsburgh is one of the top five cities we put in place early on,” said CEO Matthew Maguire. “We see a bigger vision for it beyond the user service.”

OneJet, catering to business travelers on seven-seat Hawker 400s, launched between Milwaukee and Indianapolis in April, and Pittsburgh this month. A fourth destination will be announced within two months. Down the road, OneJet plans to add crews and maintenance operations in Pittsburgh.

OneJet’s business model focuses on gate-to-gate travel between midsized cities, allowing direct flights to destinations that otherwise involve lengthy layovers. A trip to Indianapolis with a connection may take 4 ¹⁄₂ hours, compared with the about 60-minute service on OneJet

Read more: http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/8416213-74/onejet-pittsburgh-service#ixzz3bGO3ekH3
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Frontier Airlines To Return To Philadelphia

English: Frontier Airlines N929FR at FLL. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Frontier Airlines – with new owners, a new management team, and a new logo on its planes – is coming to Philadelphia with flights to seven cities.

Denver’s hometown airline will announce Tuesday nonstop flights from Philadelphia International Airport to Miami, Orlando, and Tampa, Fla., and Cancun, Mexico, in December, and to Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., and Chicago next spring.

“These are underserved markets with very high fares,” Frontier chief executive officer David Siegel said. “We’re going to expand the market, stimulating it with low fares and dropping in a little bit of capacity.”

Frontier hasn’t flown scheduled service from Philadelphia since January 2013, soon after it began flights from Trenton-Mercer Airport.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20140930_JETTING_BACK_IN.html#sifzAxdbfOBcouvv.99

Pittsburgh International Struggling Despite The Region’s Robust Economy

FAA Airport Diagram of KPIT (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald describes Pittsburgh International Airport as an economic engine for Western Pennsylvania.

Yet while Fitzgerald points to improved employment, production and tourism as signs of the region’s economic vitality, growth at Pittsburgh International is stalled.

“I can’t explain it,” Fitzgerald said of the incongruity between the region’s surging economy and an airport that is scuffling in its core business of flying.

The airport was on pace through November to post its lowest annual passenger total since opening in 1992, according to the latest data. It recently learned that 600 airline jobs will vanish when the new American Airlines, created through a merger with US Airways, closes a flight operations center in Moon by next year. An unused section of one concourse in the $1 billion airport remains walled-off. The airport doesn’t have a CEO.

Read more: http://triblive.com/business/headlines/5501301-74/airport-pittsburgh-fitzgerald#ixzz2sHkI4LvV
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US Airways Moon Township Center May Close

FAA Airport Diagram of KPIT (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

US Airways may jettison yet another Pittsburgh International Airport facility built specifically for its needs — one financed with the help of more than $16 million in public subsidies.

In a meeting last week with pilots, US Airways CEO Doug Parker said the carrier may close its state-of-the-art operations control center in Moon in “a couple years” as a result of its merger with bankrupt American Airlines.

If Mr. Parker’s prediction holds true, it would be the latest blow to a region that has seen US Airways slash more than 10,000 jobs and hundreds of flights over the past decade.  The airline also eliminated its Pittsburgh hub in 2004 — 12 years after the midfield terminal, built to its specifications, opened to support the airline’s growing needs. US Airways now has about 1,800 employees in the region.

Closing the operations control center would cost the region another 700 jobs.  The 72,000-square-foot building opened in November 2008 after Pennsylvania and Allegheny County officials outbid Charlotte, N.C., and Phoenix for the facility.  It combined a center in Findlay that US Airways had operated for 11 years and a smaller one in Phoenix, the result of the carrier’s 2005 merger with America West Airlines.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/business/news/us-airways-moon-center-may-close-680893/#ixzz2OfqwUXRr

Delta Plans Two New York Hubs 12 Miles Apart

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ATLANTA — People used to say the airline hubs in Detroit and Minneapolis (once belonging to Northwest, now Delta(DAL) ) were too close.

But now Delta is trying something never tried: operating hubs at two New York airports, LaGuardia and Kennedy, a dozen miles apart.  The carrier said Friday that by summer, it will build its LaGuardia operations into a hub providing 264 daily departures to more than 60 cities.  They include competitors’ hubs in Charlotte, N.C., Dallas, Houston, and Miami; key destinations in upstate New York; and small cities such as Wilmington, N.C.

The move represents Delta’s effort to use 132 LaGuardia slots, just acquired in a trade with US Airways(LCC) , to establish itself as the primary airline in the world’s biggest travel market. The slots will enable it to add 100 flights and 26 destinations.

Read more: http://business-news.thestreet.com/the-mercury/story/delta-plans-two-new-york-hubs-12-miles-apart/11348730