Originally Posted by
Vikz09
Tsquare, Almost sounded spiteful!
I can tell you that Delta is walking a fine line with the twin cities market. I have lived there my whole life and never seen so many people looking for new travel options. My buddy's company (one of the many fortune 500 companies in the twin cities) requires him to drive to a plant in Omaha, NE. Vs. flying. Also noticed that many of these flights are exclusively large RJ now. Perhaps Delta is placing those planes in the msp market because there is a lack of real competition, I don't have the answer but other airlines are taking notice and starting to poach the msp traveler.
I'm not sure about this. I just talked to the MSP General Manager for Delta a couple months ago and I asked him what's the future of Delta and MSP look like. He said that it's looking positive. He said that MSP is making lots of money and is one of the markets where we will see a significant amount of "up-gauging" in aircraft. He also said that the international flights are doing better than expected and he thinks we will see a couple more added this summer and next year (once the A330 mods are complete).
I don't think MSP is a Memphis or CVG type of situation. I think the shift in flying to Atlanta is more a product of capacity rather than finances. MSP is a two runway operation and even when it's VFR you often find yourself getting slowed down, delay vectors, or even holding. Atlanta can just handle much more traffic more efficiently than MSP.
Financially the twin cities has always been a gem for Northwest. There's alot of educated people in Minnesota with a relatively high medium income. And there are several fortune 500 businesses headquartered there and Delta has the corporate contracts locked up with most of them. I think one of the above graphs shows MSP with the second highest yields/departures in our system. As for the "low cost" carriers creeping in, I think most people are learning that Southwest rarely has the lowest fair anymore, and I think Delta is ok with Southwest and Sun Country picking off some of the low-fare vacation / Vegas flyers.