KelvinHelmholtz

OGS, PBG, and MOT are primarily used by Canadians traveling to Vegas/Florida to avoid high ticket prices and taxes on Canadian airlines.

ninerdriver

This. Since COVID, Allegiant is out of OGS, and Spirit is out of PBG.

ZeroTT

Pick another city… there are places that are barely viable with 50 seat service. Some will go away

as for up-gauging… it can be done but at some point it’s easier to drive 2 hours rather than take the 7am or 7pm options (or just 7am on Saturday)

rickair7777

Pax insist on reasonable frequency... the more frequency you provide, the more pax you get. Otherwise they fly the competition, drive, take the bus, or just stay home.

For discretionary travel like a weekend getaway, it's not fun if I have to get up zero-dark thirty for the flight. Also not fun if I have a four hour connection at the hub. I'd rather just stay home.

Up-gauging is not economically viable if you can't fill the seats... narrowbodies will not be replacing 50-seaters in most markets.

Excargodog

There are downsides to living in rural areas with low population density. Certain issues that depend on logistics, frequency, and economies of scale, like a major medical center or busy airport, just aren’t going to be there. That’s always been the case. But what has not been the case is the shortfall of replacement aircraft to replace the aging 50 seaters or pilots to crew them.

I don’t see people resuming manufacture of current technology 50 seaters in this environment but then neither do I see anyone willing to build electric powered or hydrogen fueled small pax aircraft in this environment either. PAX carrying drones, I suppose, are possible, but currently those aren’t particularly fast. A Military Predator drone only travels ~110 knots or so. Granted, that can be straight line, but it isn’t much more than twice the speed of a private auto. I don’t see any quick or cheap fixes to this problem.

And yet all of the legacies have built their business model around a hub and spoke design that significantly depends on regional feeders, including 50 seat feed that will soon not be there.

We live in interesting times.

flightlessbirds

Especially when the ULCC's have already taken a whole bunch of the non-schedule driven low yield leisure pax by running schedules to connect 2nd/3rd tier cities to vacation spots on a 2-6x/week frequency.

rickair7777

New turboprops maybe? But there's also the issue of pilots... if you can't hire them for $19k/year it makes small regional planes of any sort much less viable.

Some discretionary travel business might be lost. Most of it will simply shift to driving/bus to a bigger town... there are few place which are more than 2-3 hours from a hub and fewer still such that you can't drive to a somewhat larger town which has either ULCC or regional service.

DontLookDown

If people want to travel often and require flexibility they will live by a major airport.

If they want a quiet lifestyle with a lot of property they will live in a rural area.

You can’t always have both. I think the people that live in rural areas will ultimately have to choose what they want:
1) wake up at 4 AM to hop on the 1 narrow-body flight that serves their town.
2) drive whatever distance it is to their destination

DontLookDown

…or option 3, make a ton of money and just charter your own plane!

JayRalstonSmith

I must have missed the Southwest, JetBlue, and Alaska bankruptcies.