I lived in Houston for five years, and between IAH and Hobby I had a variety of airlines to choose from when I wanted to travel. Since then, I moved to Philadelphia, an airport dominated by American Airlines to a great extent. Although I am usually a loyal American flyer, my loyalty has recently been put to the test by American’s continuing poor performance (as a stock and as an airline). In order to boost up competition in the Philadelphia market, more airlines should fly to PHL. I have always wondered why there aren’t more airlines at/near Philadelphia. It is the 4th largest economic metropolitan area in the United States (with a GDP of over $330 billion). It has the 3rd highest GDP per capita of any of the largest metropolitan areas of the world (as of 2009). So, as much as it baffles me why PHL is so underserved, there are some routes that I would love to see operate either seasonally or year round.
Domestic
Delta Airlines Routes
The primary route I would like to see Delta begin flying to/from Philadelphia is LAX. The airline has a solid network out of LAX, and there is a lot of potential to disrupt American’s monopoly on the route. They could fly the route with a non-premium 737, which is nicer than American’s A321s that fly most schedules on that route.
A second route I would like to the Delta begin flying out of Philly is Seattle. Seattle is one of the largest economic zones in the United States. There is a Boeing plant about 10 minutes from PHL airport. Although Alaska and American both fly this route, Delta offers the strongest international connections out of SEA.
Southwest Routes
Southwest offers a sizeable number of routes out of PHL, the main problem is the number of frequencies is not very high. Beyond increasing some frequencies to cities such as Dallas Love Field and Houston Hobby, the airline should venture to launch flights from the West Coast. I would love to see flights from Las Vegas on Southwest year round, as well as from California. Ideally, they would launch flights to/from Oakland.
Alaska Airlines Routes
Alaska is the largest airline in California. In order to better connect passengers from the PHL area to California, they should increase flights from LAX and SFO, as well as add new destinations. I think they could make a daily flight from San Jose (SJC) work daily, and a seasonal flight from San Diego.
JetBlue Routes
Although I believe there is a market for PHL-JFK flights, I don’t think that JetBlue is the ideal candidate for that route, that’s why I think that their best bet is to fly from Orlando to PHL. The airline has a hub at MCO, and American seems to run a very profitable flight schedule to Orlando. In order to increase competition further (Southwest, Frontier and Spirit fly this route) JetBlue could launch a once daily flight on their ERJ-190s. The aircraft is small enough that it can likely be filled for the once daily turn.
International
I would like to preface this section that there are no carriers that I specifically want to see fly these routes. I feel that there is potential for these markets, but I do not have enough market data to clearly determine. This section is plainly wishful thinking, but I see merits to each route.
Europe
Munich → Flown by Lufthansa (American recently abandoned this route, Lufthansa could likely make it work with their fuel efficient A350s).
Madrid → Flown by Iberia
Amsterdam → Flown by KLM
Milan MXP → Flown by American
Tel Aviv → Flown by American or EL AL
Helsinki → Flown by Finnair
Middle East & Africa
Dubai→ Flown by Emirates (This would be a really controversial flight. American and the ME3 are in a heated dispute, and this would be striking American where it hurts, sort of. American does not fly to the Middle East from PHL, nor do they have any connections to the region.)
Casablanca→ Flown by American or Royal Air Maroc (only by the time RAM joins OneWorld).
Central & South America
São Paulo → Flown by American or LATAM
Buenos Aires → Flown by American or LATAM
Bogota→ Flown by Avianca
Panama City→ Flown by COPA
Asia
Tokyo→ Flown by American or JAL
Beijing→ Flown by China Southern
Hong Kong → Flown by Cathay Pacific on their A350-900
Landing Thoughts
I will remain surprised that Philadelphia is not as well connected as other cities such as Dallas, Houston or Seattle. The economic zone in the Greater Philadelphia metropolitan area is substantially greater than in those three cities. Hopefully, we will see American add destinations in new regions, and foreign carriers begin to expand their presence here. Other domestic carriers have room to grow, and hopefully we will see that expansion manifest itself over the next few years.
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Economic Data from PwC Study (link here).
Lot’s of this is definitely wishful thinking. I don’t think any non-oneworld carrier can see enough O-D demand to make any intl. Philly route work, Lufthansa being the exception but even their numbers in the winter are horrible. The cancellation of FRA & MUC should offset this from now on though. Air France left PHL about 8 years ago and Delta couldn’t make CDG and LHR work with 757’s so I don’t see any other niche carrier like Finnair or El Al make anything work.
AA cancelled MEX after only a couple of months so again I don’t think any other South American destination would do well. Philly doesn’t have a sizeable Hispanic population and people from here going on vacation prefer Ireland or Italy over Brazil.
Asia is completely out of the question unless you get a small airline like Hainan and a charter deal which has 3 flights a week or so.
Overall I believe AA is running a wrong strategy especially with Europe flights from Philly which will be reversed 2-3 years down the road as they focus on these obscure seasonal destinations in favor of traditional year round business. Their lack of a decent central/eastern European partner airline tops it off as no sane person will want to connect through LHR.
Hi Skaner, thanks for reading!
I agree that without any connecting traffic, most niche carriers would not be able to make it work. I think that some OW carriers could feasibly make PHL a destination, even if seasonally, if they had connecting traffic with AA flights. People always talk about the TLV flight returning with AA. The whole obscure cities in Europe strategy is wrong, I agree, it feels like the add for the sake of adding destinations that don’t make sense. Ideally, when they introduce the 787-8 to PHL, we will see more reasonable European routes, and maybe some routes to Asia or S.Am.
Best,
The Millennial Traveler
I have no “data” other than when Southwest came to town about 10-15 years ago, they flew with a lot more frequency to florida destinations, and had hourly (or so it seemed) flights to Boston and Pittsburgh. At one time, Southwest flew non-stop to LAX and had a few non-stops to Las Vegas. I fly Southwest about 6-8 times a year, and their flights always seem jammed to and from Philadelphia, but I have to assume that Southwest cut all of these non-stops to these destinations, because their resources were better used elsewhere. Now, it seems aside from Orlando and fort lauderdale, they only fly non stop to Denver, Nashville and Chicago; or so it seems. We can wish all we want, and wonder why it didn’t make economic sense, but unless Philadelphia guarantees service with subsidies (as many other airports do), our only expansion seems to be with Spirit and Frontier. Oy.
Hi Larry, thanks for reading!
I haven’t been living in PHL enough to see how full SWA flights were, but my last flight to Hobby (via Orlando) was packed. I don’t know why PHL doesn’t do subsidies (or if they do) but I would suspect it is pressure from American trying to control the market. Frontier and Spirit are expanding, but I don’t like to fly either because their frequent flyer programs are worthless x_x .
Best,
The Millennial Traveler
i have absolutely where you get those GDP figures from, but it’s quite hard to imagine any scenario where PHL is ranked 3rd considering NYC SF Bay Area Boston and DC regions all pretty much have a higher GDP per capita than Philly.
And this is where the terribly flawed definition of MSA comes into play cuz it chops SFO-OAK away from SJC, and anyone who has lived in the Bay Area couldn’t argue with any straight face those are 2 independent metropolitan areas.
The PHL-Asia fantasy listing is quite adorable considering after a trillion years of JV, neither AA nor JL could figure out how to fly PHL to either NRT or HND, and somehow you fantasize PHL-PEK/HKG is possible. (yea LUS bid for PHL-PEK but nothing came of it)
Hi HenryLAX, thanks for reading!
The economic data is from a PwC study conducted between 2006-2008. PwC is one of the three big accouting firms, and I trust their numbers.
SFO-OAK might be one major metropolitan area, but as you mention, Metropolitan Statistical Area is a government definition.
PHL is possible with AA’s venture with CZ, and if AA and JAL can make Boston work, I don’t see why PHL is too far off!
Best,
The Millennial Traveler