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Topic: LAX it is!
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twa2amr
Post Captain
Member # 5
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posted
Trans World Airlines, hoping to become profitable by expanding its flying outside its single hub in St. Louis, is expected to announce Monday that it will make Los Angeles its second "focus city."
The airline last fall chose San Juan, Puerto Rico, as its first focus city and significantly increased service to and from that destination. A spokesman said TWA, the nation's eighth-largest carrier, hopes to launch a third focus city next year.TWA chose Los Angeles after considering some two dozen locations. Part of its appeal is that no one carrier totally dominates Los Angeles International Airport, the world's third busiest. While UAL Corp.'s United Airlines claims it as a hub, United has only 29% of the domestic passenger traffic at LAX. The TWA buildup at Los Angeles actually has been under way for some time. The airline began flying nonstop from Los Angeles to San Juan last year, added nonstop service to Kona, Hawaii, in May, boosted its daily round trips to St. Louis to eight earlier this month and increased the number of nonstop daily flights to New York's Kennedy Airport to four. A fifth daily trip will be added later this year on that busy route. Earlier this month the Department of Transportation awarded TWA the exclusive right to serve Washington's close-in Reagan National Airport from Los Angeles. That daily round trip will begin Sept. 10. By then, the carrier will have boosted its capacity by 70% in the Los Angeles market. TWA is looking at adding other destinations out of LAX, the spokesman said. To support the new services, TWA said it signed an agreement with AMR Corp.'s American Eagle commuter operation to provide feeder flights starting in October from Los Angeles to seven California cities: Bakersfield, Fresno, Monterey, Palm Springs, San Diego, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara. "We recognize we can't survive just on a hub in St. Louis," the TWA spokesman said. "We need to find markets where we can have a competitive presence with point-to-point service that complements our hub." TWA hasn't turned an annual profit in more than a decade. But in the past couple of years, the St. Louis-based company has shed money-losing European routes, upgraded its fleet and become much more punctual. Now it is restructuring its North American route network to maximize its St. Louis hub, add flights in other big markets where it thinks it can be a contender, and lure more lucrative business travelers. The San Juan operation, which put TWA into direct competition with a hub of AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, "is living up to our expectations," the spokesman said, but he declined to say whether it is profitable. The flights from San Juan to Los Angeles and to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., aren't doing as well as hoped, he said. But those to St. Louis, Orlando, Fla., Boston and New York's Kennedy Airport are going strong, he said. TWA also offers jet flights from San Juan to Aruba and Santo Domingo. To complement its own flights, TWA last fall signed up Gulfstream International Airlines to offer feeder flights from San Juan to five destinations in the Caribbean.
Posts: 220 | From: yot
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acvitale
Post Captain
Member # 59
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posted
Seriously disappointed. Not a focus city but, a fall back and save of face.
Posts: 47 | From: W. Palm Beach, FL. USA
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PITbeast
Post Captain
Member # 108
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posted
There's also an Ambassador Club (which ws remodeled in the last 5-6years) in LAX so they don't have to spend a dime on adding one.
Posts: 208 | From: Mount Olive, NC
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starling63
Post Captain
Member # 92
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posted
Well, more than 24 hrs after the announcement and a good night's sleep I am becoming more and more enthusiastic over the focus city choice. A lot of regular posters on the other boards seem to be disappointed, because TWA did not announce a flurry of new destinations, and I have to admit that that was my first thought, too.
However, if you look at how TWA has developed since 1999, the announcement is completely in line with what Bill Compton had envisioned for TWA. He has repeatedly said that TWA's growth between 1999 and 2001 will mainly come from three stations, dubbed as "focus cities", where TWA to destinations other than its hubs. Note that in TWA lingo STL and JFK are the hubs.
I always thought that the most exciting effect of any focus city was an increased presence at LAX, and that's what we're getting after all.
Noone ever said that every focus city would start with a big bang, where a dozen of new flights would be thrown into the market. SJU started off this way, but that doesn't mean that would be true for all of them. In fact, I like the evolutionary way a lot better. For one start-up losses are kept to a minimum this way. If a lot of capacity is dumped into the market, the planes fly empty for a while until the new offer is accepted by the traveler, something TWA can ill-afford. True, some of the SJU routes were initially subsidized, nonetheless the losses in 1Q 2000 were at record highs. Also, the competitors' responses are less aggressive, when you sneak in one flight at a time into "their" markets. Besides, with the accelerated retirement of the B727, TWA's fleet size will temporarily fall below pre-Ozark levels in terms of aircraft count, and despite the influx of 717s, the net growth will be close to zero year-over year. Realistically, a significant expansion using mainline aircraft is not feasible at this time. Since November '99, TWA has added or will add soon two flights to STL, two to JFK, one to SJU, one to DCA, and one to KOA, bringing the total to 15 daily flights, and all but two are operated with B757/767. I haven't done the math, but it looks at first glance like TWA will be flying more seats (and hopefully more pax) in and out of LAX than in SJU, after it became a focus city.
I think, LAX has a great potential, probably more than SJU. It allows TWA to become a major player in the transcon market again, and a lot of new destinations can be added by "tagging" LAX on to westbound flights originating in STL. i.e STL-ABQ-LAX. Besides, with a significant presence in LAX, TWA becomes an attractive alliance partner for any Asian carrier, and there are a lot of reputable ones out there, who are still looking for a U.S. partner. And who knows, a few years down the road TWA may even resume its own transpacific flights.
In addition to the flights that have already been introduced, TWA will introduce one new route from LAX later this year. I wonder, if this hitherto unnamed destination will eventually become focus city #3 ...
Posts: 41
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