Read the paper after my post earlier today.. I know this is hard to believe but Bob Nemeth's editorial says it all (sorry the link is not working): "Any failure lies with Allegiant not with Worcester, MassPort or area travelers" and "planes routinely have been filled to 85 percent to 90 percent of capacity" . Clearly the numbers do not back up the 85-90 percent capacity claim and how can we lay all blame on Allegiant??
Actually we should be thanking Allegiant for taking a chance on Worcester, while providing great service at a great price. Let me make an analogy of a business that opens, has great products and great prices, but closes down. Why does that typically happen? The answer usually is that the business did not market their services well enough.
How can we place all blame on Allegiant? In the end, I feel that Allegiant's product brought us the 75% loads and it was up to the airport administration to market the flights to achieve the 90+ loads. This did not happen--why? All the marketing efforts especially the use of the $455,000 of Small Community Air Service funds have to be be questioned, poor website needs to be completely overhauled, parking fees must be waived and one route needs to clearly established as "the road" to ORH.
Lastly, next to the editorial there is a picture depicting Allegiant stabbing Worcester in the back. Let me ask you this if you were an airline considerinig ORH, how would feel reading editorials placing all blame on Allegiant and pictures of this nature. Time to take the high road, thank Allegiant for working with us and work on our deficiencies which are quite evident.
Has anyone seen or heard from our Airport Director or Liaison???
WRRB/Telegram District City Council Forum 10/18
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6 months ago
18 comments:
How could an airport commissioner possibly accept the blame?
Has nothing to do with a dirt road leading to the airport.
Has nothing to do with stealth marketing.
Has nothing to do with publishing wrong load figures.
Has nothing to do with a complete lack of action when Boston became virtually inaccessable.
Has nothing to do with Worcester ignoring the paid consultants who said to offer free parking.
Yup. It's all Allegiant's Fault.
Bob Nemeth Wrote:
"planes routinely have been filled to 85 percent to 90 percent of capacity"
Sure, SOME of the planes were filled to 85 to 90 percent, but in order to reach the numbers published by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, others had to be filled 50 - 50 percent.
Charley:
Sometime you confuse me.. I am not blaming the airport commissioners??? These guys do it on a volunteer basis with no pay and meet once per month.
Bill
Some thoughts for all of you.
Your airport says Pease will also be dropped. But Portsmouth says they are negotiating with Allegiant. Sounds like something is happening at Pease that ORH did not do.
Today Allegiant announced Greenville, SC. So they are not cutting costs to look good for the IPO. They simply have a pattern of cutting airports that do not respond.
Anonymous:
You are right. Also imagine if you were running Portsmouth, how mad would you at Worcester for saying that they will be losing Allegiant. Portsmouth is trying to sell tickets to keep Allegiant and now they have to allay the concerns of people in their catchment area that Allegiant will be around.
Even if Allegiant indicated to ORH that they were looking closely at Portsmouth, we should not have mentioned this in the press.
Bill
The Commission is responsible for providing commercial and general aviation airport services and facilities at the municipally owned airport. The Commission sets airport policy, establishes the rules and regulations of the department, supervises the Airport Manager, and performs all duties prescribed for municipal airport commissions by Chapter 90 of the Massachusetts General Laws, with the approval of the Massachusetts Aeronautics Commission.
Charley:
Have you ever served on a board??? You think the commissioners are responsible for the every day decisions at ORH??
You can site a Mass General Law all you want but that is not the reality of the situation.
Bill
Where is your hard proof that the loads really were 75%, instead of the published 85-90%...which by the way was published in Thursday's issue of USA Today.
E-mail me any response: Alaber91@aol.com
Alec:
Read our blogs.
Based on the the 10,000 passenger being on the 98th outbound flight, it works out to be 78.50%.
Then check out Charley Farley's comments from on June 23rd. He pulls the numbers directly from the gov't web site that tracks passenger counts.
It is pretty clear that the loads were closer to 75% then 90%.
Alec:
Here you go. Copy of one of Charley's comments the other day--May outbound was down to 61.20%:
Jan From ORH TO SFB Flights 10 Seats 1360 Pax 1106 Load 81.32%
Jan From SFB TO ORH Flights 11 Seats 1510 Pax 1149 Load 76.09%
Feb From ORH TO SFB Flights 14 Seats 1880 Pax 1610 Load 85.64%
Feb From SFB TO ORH Flights 14 Seats 1880 Pax 1294 Load 68.83%
Mar From ORH TO SFB Flights 18 Seats 2560 Pax 2042 Load 79.77%
Mar From SFB TO ORH Flights 18 Seats 2560 Pax 2081 Load 81.29%
Apr From ORH TO SFB Flights 19 Seats 2550 Pax 2043 Load 80.12%
Apr From SFB TO ORH Flights 19 Seats 2550 Pax 1984 Load 77.80%
May From ORH TO SFB Flights 17 Seats 2250 Pax 1377 Load 61.20%
May From SFB TO ORH Flights 17 Seats 2250 Pax 1661 Load 73.82%
2006 Load Total 76.57%
If worcester charged Allegiant per passenger, and that is how we figured out the load factors of 85-90% (like city manager said), why are we wrong? Were we charging Allegiant for fake travelers? Maybe they believe load factors were lower because people that bought tickets never showed up.The way I see it, neither side is 100% to blame. We just have to wait a little longer and see what this pending announcement is. In my opinion however, the announcement will have no connection to commercial service, but instead be connected to the empty land around the airport.
Anonymous:
Worcester did not have any per passenger charge back to Allegiant???
The numbers to the government website seem pretty clear cut to me. If these are wrong let the airport release their own numbers.
Allegiant has no reason to lie and the last thing they wanted to do it to come into this market and leave after 9 months. Clearly the loads were not there and we need to accept this fact.
This is starting to remind me of George Orwell's Animal Farm.
Bill from Worcester,MA said...
"You can site a Mass General Law all you want but that is not the reality of the situation. "
That's the description of an airport commissioner from the city of worcester website.
The key phrase is "supervises the Airport Manager"
Shouldn't we be looking at who has the power to hire and fire the airport manager?
I guess The commission supervises the manager. This supervision could run the gamut from rubber stamping the managers moves to very close review of all the managers actions.
Who hires & fires? That person has the ultimate power over the airport manager.
Right Airline
Right Time
Right Cathchment Area
Wrong Management
Let me get this straight....it is the airorts fault that a rpivate company did not advertise
Anonymous:
You are right.. It is completely Allegiant's fault that they failed in Worcester.
The airport did an excellent job and we will have many carriers lined up waiting to to come service ORH.
Bill
Obviously I was just kiddin on my last comment. I am starting to think that "anonymous" works at the airport?
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