March 12, 2006

Direct Service Versus One Stop

The other day I posted a message about ORH working with other secondary cities who all have the same goals being direct service to popular leisure destinations (Florida, Vegas and Mytrle).. On top of that maybe consider utilizing a Gary, Indiana. Think about this.

Say we got a company to fly three planes from ORH, Portsmouth, New Haven to Gary. At which these three planes continued to Myrtle, Vegas and St Petes. A person in Worcester would in essence be able to continue on to 4 locations with this one flight:

  1. Vegas
  2. Myrtle
  3. St Pete
  4. Chicago

I would much rather have direct service to theser four locations then a stop in Gary, Indiana, Youngstown, Oh but what are the chances of getting four flights to these locations versus one flight to a mini-hub like Gary or Youngstown. Now an airline isn't stupid either if we started getting 80% loads on a flight to St Pete's that makes a stop an airline would decide to make direct to St Pete's.

We all want direct service but we need to be realistic and consider all options. By the way last time I flew to Boca Raton my SouthWest ticket out of TF Green simply said Fort Lauderdale, but we stopped in Tampa.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Check with your travel agent. A direct flight simply means you don't change planes. Non-stop is better, but different.