The downsizing of the airline industry has turned up in Aspen, where US Airways is canceling a decade-old direct flight to Phoenix and United Airlines has trimmed one of its three direct daily flights to Chicago.
The Aspen-to-Phoenix flight was running at a 61 percent load factor last winter when the average load here is closer to 75 percent, according to Stay Aspen Snowmass President Bill Tomcich, an airline industry expert.
“The loss of Phoenix really doesn’t surprise me at all. That was the weakest performer of all nonstop commercial flights last winter,” Tomcich said. “With oil around $140 a barrel, 61 percent load factors don’t pay the bills anymore.”
America West started the direct service between Aspen and Phoenix in the winter of 1997-1998 and US Airways absorbed it when the two airlines merged a couple of years ago. The flight was served by a Dash-8 prop plane.
“That’s a very small loss in the overall scheme of things. In fact, it was only 2 1/2 percent of our total number of seats annually. It’s barely a drop in the bucket,” said Tomcich, adding that it was primarily used by second-home owners with Arizona ties.
“There was very little connecting traffic,” he said.
The airline will also be nixing all of its seasonal service out of Eagle County Airport this winter, meaning direct flights to Philadelphia on Saturdays and Charlotte, N.C., on Saturdays and Sundays are no longer an option.
United Airlines will continue to offer direct service between Aspen and Chicago, which it introduced in December 2006, but the airline is scaling back, nixing one of its three daily flights — a flight it only added last year.
Further reductions are “inevitable,” according to Tomcich.
As airlines shrink the flight frequencies and services from their main hubs, they also have to reduce the number of services to smaller airports that rely on the hub traffic.
“I’ve been told by senior [United] officials, that as far as frequencies go, Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco are all being evaluated,” he said, adding that more reductions could come within the next month or two. “Decisions are yet to be made but we’re keeping very close tabs on what’s going on.”
Earlier this summer, Delta Air Lines quietly pulled its off-season schedule out of Aspen but it plans to return here in the winter with more flights than ever before. United also yanked its service to Florida’s Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, which are two important feeder markets for Aspen residents and its tourist-based economy.
Despite the news, Tomcich remains upbeat about Aspen’s winter flight schedule.
“If everything holds together — Frontier Airlines weathers their bankruptcy filing and United’s reductions don’t hit us too hard — we should still have more seats this winter than we had last winter or the year prior. We’ll be continuing sustained growth but not nearly as substantially as the growth we experienced with Frontier’s arrival.”
Much of the optimism stems from the fact that flights to Aspen generally make money for the airlines; the Los Angeles flight, for example, is “incredibly lucrative,” he said.
Moreover, Frontier’s entrance into the Aspen market has dramatically increased the number of options for local fliers and it has also made ticket pricing more competitive.
United’s summer schedule currently has 13 daily flights to Aspen. Last year United flew a total of 14 daily flights in the winter. But next winter is likely to be a different story.
hoop@aspendailynews.com
