Even though Frontier is having difficulties right now, I wouldn’t put it past them to be watching the numbers on Southern Skyways’ advance bookings to Denver and contemplating making a go of it with two times daily on a seventy seater. All it takes is for them to make a go of it and the Airport Authority is out of the Southern deal (at least I would assume).

jetBlue sure would be a nice addition to RFD. They are the only low cost carrier that has pretty much all the destinations that RFD needs, as well as a willingness to serve multiple airports in a metro (they are at four out of five NY area airports, and four out of five LA Basin airports, although LAX is on hold).

Once some stablility can be reached in the current avaiation and ecomomic climate, I would think that Frontier could have some interest in looking at RFD.

Also it is my understanding that the RFD to Fort Lauderdale flights have had 85% plus load factors. If Allegiant does not restart the route, do you think that Spirit could be interested since they have a hub at Fort Lauderdale ?

Anwyay, to continue, the unit costs for flying a 39 seat RJ the 930 miles that are between Cedar Rapids and LaGuardia are far too high to be absorbed by what little business travel base exists in Cedar Rapids. Although I don’t know too much about Cedar Rapids and its business climate, I know that I have never sent a check there. The price of fuel, coupled with the costs of misappropriation of a coveted LaGuardia slot, lead me to believe that this will not last long. In fact, its probably a competitive move to keep somebody out of the eastern Iowa region.

I think we are going to see alot of these long distance, nonstop RJ flights from smaller markets get rerouted through the nearest hub. In Springfield’s case, O’hare.

Sad to say that the large scale hub and spoke, at least in terms of the legacies, is here to stay.