Originally Posted by
ROTORGUY
AUS would be great for all the displaced HOU FO’s. I would imagine it would greatly benefit the HOU and DAL folks. Lots of guys living in the Austin, San Antonio area will be happy if that’s true. I was thinking it would be MCI but more and more people are saying AUS. I see Delta is trying to make a run for AUS so I would imagine we will try to get as many of the new gates as possible but that what 4-5 years out?
I do think the Delta factor plays in with Austin, if Southwest wants to defend their turf there they are going to have to put up a big fight there and increase flights, if for nothing else to keep gates from Delta. So just by number of flights they want to run through there it should be a base.
Other factor in my mind, and probably much lesser and more forward looking... "IF" big IF Southwest actually orders 787s or some widebody they can't run the out of Love or Hobby so Austin gives base in Texas that can handle them, since HOU and DAL can't run them.
I also don't get the MCI thought beside Southwest being their biggest airline. I am pretty sure they are scheduled for less flights out of there in the coming months than they had before the new airport. Either way flight have been trending down there and March 2026 they are under 70 flights on weekdays. That is quite a bit less than STL 110ish and SAN/AUS which I think are 120ish. Even factoring in RONs I am not sure it really makes sense when the others are 50%+ bigger.