blopp1234

The USDOT stats for Q3 2023 are out and below is a list of the top destinations out of RIC with no service or less than daily service and over 50 passengers traveling each way each day. RIC-LAX: 187 (3x per week on Breeze) RIC-SFO: 132 (2x per week on Breeze) RIC-BNA: 94 (2x per week on Allegiant) RIC- MSY: 92 (2x per week on Breeze) RIC-PHX: 87 (2x per week on Breeze) RIC- SEA: 77 RIC-SAN: 66 RIC-AUS: 61 RIC-JAX: 57 (2x per week on Breeze) RIC-SLC: 55 RIC-MCI: 51 A few things that jump out about these numbers. 1.) Southwest not adding Nashville is wild to me. RIC is one of the top 3 domestic destinations not served by Southwest at Nashville, so my guess is that route gets added within the next year by Southwest. 2.) While it’s great that Breeze has added cities like LAX and SFO, I don’t see them sticking around on those routes in the longs term as they offer no connections at either of those airports. I think the airport should be looking to attract American, Delta or United to fly these routes as the ability to connect can really make a flight more useful for someone trying to get from RIC to Asia. I don’t want to be pessimistic but I wouldn’t be shocked if Spirit goes under or goes bankrupt in the next few months after their failed merger with JetBlue. This will make it interesting to see what happens with their routes out of RIC.

Man I can’t wait to see that Costar building start going vertical!

I don’t believe it will impact the Locks 7 & 8 buildings. Those are located to the east on what is currently a parking lot.

The link is attached below: https://vapassengerrailauthority.org/richmond-layover-facility/ The project includes (but is not limited to) the following improvements: Storage tracks Maintenance platform(s) and Amtrak amenities Signaling Roadway improvements for site access Staff parking Trailers for staff facilities Storage containers for equipment

It will look even better when Fulton Yards starts construction. Development currently drops off when you hit the CSX railroad viaduct, however, with the Fulton yards development, both sides should be better connected. By the way, has anyone heard or seen anything going on regarding the Fulton Yards development? I haven’t heard anything in a while and am hoping it’s still proceeding. Any update would be appreciated! Slightly unrelated but Amtrak is planning to build a train storage facility around where the blue freight cars are in the first image to overnight trains from Main Street Station, which will allow Main Street to have upwards of 8 daily passenger trains to the north, an increase over the 3 existing trains. This won’t necessarily bring increased activity to the area, but it is Rockett’s related so I figured I’d post it here.

International flights will only use gate B15. The international arrivals sign is just referring to that area of the concourse has the international arrivals gate.

Jeez. This pretty much means Breeze is pulling out of Phoenix entirely outside of the one route to San Bernardino I believe. Overall, I’m beginning to worry about Breeze. They can’t seem to figure out if they want to compete with full service carriers who use the hub and spoke model, compete with the hybrid carriers like Southwest and JetBlue who do some point to point and some hub style flying, or Allegiant who flies from small cities to vacation destinations.

I’d be willing to bet they have a higher percentage fail to be honest. A lot of their large scale projects have been scaled back, such as Amazons HQ2, multiple projects in Tysons havent materialized that were proposed over 5-6 years ago such as the 600ish foot residential tower, the innovation parkway development out in Loudon hasn’t materialized after decades of proposals, and there are many others that have either been scaled back or haven’t materialized. Every area, including those that we envy for development such as Austin, Charlotte and Raleigh, have cancellations and projects scaled back just as much as the Richmond area. I think we lose sight of how little actually gets scaled back and cancelled in RVA and how well development is doing in the metro area compared to the majority of areas in the country. While we obviously want all development projects to succeed, it’s important to accept that not every development will come off the drawing board, even during periods of rapid economic growth. While yes we do have projects that have been scaled back or cancelled, such as centennial towers, the locks tower, dominion, etc. I think the dozens of success stories of development in Richmond far outweigh the developments that haven’t materialized.

Breeze has started overnighting aircraft at Phoenix Sky Harbor to make flights to places like RIC easier and more reliable. Having the longer routing of BDL-RIC-PHX leads to reliability issues if there’s weather in the northeast. The overnighting of aircraft should help keep the flight more on schedule.

I would strongly disagree about stuff getting done in NOVA. The amount of developments that have failed in Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax and Loudon easily exceeds failed developments in the Richmond metro area. Also, regarding the caps and wizards move to Alexandria, there is already strong pushback from people, not just NIMBYs about the teams being moved. Most of the discussion has to do with the arena being moved from a connecting point for all metro lines to being located further out with access to only 2 metro lines. Not to mention with metros potential budget cuts, the Potomac yard station, which is the only public transit to the stadium site, could be shut down due to lack of funding, which would create a nightmare for anyone living in Alexandria, Potomac yards or crystal city.

Seems like almost every departure this morning has been delayed, most likely due to the dusting that hit the metro area last night. I thought the deicing area was supposed to be ready by this point, however maybe the airport didn’t anticipate any snow last night. There still appear to be flights on the ground that were scheduled to depart over 2 hours ago. Makes me glad I’m not flying today!

Thanks for sharing! Houston Hobby would make sense. Only 1 daily flight is offered to the Houston area out of Richmond on United, so Southwest definitely has an opportunity with that route. I can’t see Dallas Love field being added because Southwest is already pushing the capacity of what that airport can handle. Until Dallas Love expands or Southwest goes into DFW, I don’t see them adding flights to the Dallas Metroplex. The most logical adds I can think of would be service to Nashville and Orlando. Both are major bases for Southwest with over 150 daily flights, just from Southwest. JetBlue will have a monopoly at MCO once they acquire Spirit so it would make sense for Southwest to come compete with them. Nashville also puts up solid passenger numbers with service just a few times per week on Allegiant, so it would make sense that daily southwest service would be packed, especially given all the connections southwest has at Nashville. I think it is also possible, just not probable, that Southwest could add flights to St Louis or Tampa. Both are bases for Southwest and RIC is one of the largest markets not served by Southwest at both St Louis and Tampa. Ultimately, it will be interesting to see if this new schedule release shows an increased commitment by Southwest at RIC.

Seems like this is VDOT trying to get around widening the 288 bridge. Would guess that work to widen 288 from Broad to Patterson from 4 to 6 will begin within the next 5 years. They are already working on adding a third lane between the powhite and hull on 288 now and all the growth out in that area of the metro will only further road development.

Speaking of Richmond to Raleigh, I’ve heard rumors that the Richmond to Raleigh corridor will receive $1 billion in funding to be announced within the next few weeks as part of the FRA Corridor ID funds from the Infrastructure Bill. The funding to be allocated will go towards the reconstruction of the abandoned S Line. This will be huge for Richmond as it will shave over an hour off the travel time to Raleigh, which is currently over 3 hours by train. Also sets the groundwork for more service along that corridor in the future. Once the official announcement has been made, I’ll make sure to post it (unless someone beats me to it!)

Would love to either get southwest back on that route or have Frontier start service to RIC with flights to Orlando. Southwest and Frontier would be the only 2 airlines I could see adding RIC-MCO to compete with JetBlue/Spirit.

Awesome! Haven’t been on an A220 yet (hoping to change that in the coming months) but I took. E190 with Breeze and it was a great plane. Definitely older now and needs replacement as I believe JetBlue’s E190s are from the early 2000s, but they will be missed. The E-190 has a lower capacity than the A-220 so this should lead to more seats on JetBlue flights out of RIC. I’ve also noticed that JetBlue has added a second daily flight to Orlando on an E-190 in addition to the A-320 they’ve offered. This is three total flights per day to Orlando on JetBlue (2x per day) and Spirit (1x per day). Would love southwest to re add Orlando with atleast 1 daily flight since when JetBlue and Spirit merge, JetBlue will have a monopoly on the RIC-MCO route.

I agree that RIC will hit 5 million by 2025, if not next year. I could feasibly see the airport hitting 6 million by 2030 if the airport doesn’t see its current growth increase. However, with more flights offered, more passengers area likely to be tempted into flying. My best guess as to new routes are as follows: LAX- daily service with American, Delta or United Nashville- daily service with Southwest Toronto- daily service with Air Canada Cancun- a couple flights per week with one of the following airlines; JetBlue, Southwest, Viva aerobus, volaris, spirit or Breeze( should they decide to go international out of RIC) St Louis- weekend service with Southwest Seattle- daily service with Alaska These are all just potential guesses as to what could realistically be done, however, who knows what will happen as airlines may be more bullish on RIC than I’m predicting, or a new airline like Frontier may decide to enter the Richmond market.

There is no satellite city esque development proposed anywhere in this area. The closest thing to a city in that part of the county would be westchester commons, which is a suburban shopping center with some apartments and townhouses. As someone who has family living in this area and grew up in this area, there is more support for the expressway to be extended to woolridge road in Rountrey and have it terminate there as opposed to having it go all the way to Hull Street. That area of the county, as is common with most suburban localities, is very anti development and all I hear from family and friends in that area is how much they hate the woods being cleared. I’d much rather see the $700 million the county and state would spend on extending the powhite to Hull redirected to adding bihourly regional rail on the old Richmond and Danville railroad line to Midlo, then adding high quality BRT down Hull and Midlo Turnpike and implementing GRTC service across the county. Most of which could probably be accomplished for around the same price as building the powhite extension and have a much bigger impact on growth in Chesterfield.

RIC has direct flights to Minneapolis on Delta year round and on Sun Country during the summers. Hope that helps!

Was able snap a pic of the project going up behind Sauer Center near the Lowe’s on Broad. Can’t remember what project this was so maybe someone could help me out, but it looks like the parking garage has topped out and the building itself should be rising soon. Anyway happy thanksgiving to y’all!

Not saying that San Diego shouldn’t be pursued, but I’d rather see RIC go after daily service to LAX, SFO or PHX first. San Diego will be a tougher task to get, whereas RIC is one of the top destinations not served daily from the 3 aforementioned airports, all of which are hubs for major airlines. Once we secure daily SFO, LAX, PHX and SEA, then focus can turn to SAN, however, I feel that should be lower on the priorities list than the aforementioned destinations.

1. This is definitely a project I hope continues to advance as it will help every metro area between DC and Charlotte (including both Raleigh and Richmond) and should be pursued by both states. If my memory serves me right it was shown in Amtraks Connect US plan and was applied for as part of the corridor ID program, so hopefully it gets funding from the FRA. 2. As far as conversations regarding the airport, I have nothing bad to say about RDU. They are easily outpacing the growth of their peer markets and have established themselves as a future major metro that rivals major metro areas such as Austin, Charlotte, Salt Lake City, Portland, etc. I’m genuinely surprised that they haven’t landed a full blown hub, much less a focus city from the likes of Southwest, JetBlue or Frontier. I know they are a Delta focus city but it doesn’t seem Delta has fully brought back all the pre pandemic service that was offered at RDU. With that being said, I think the reason you don’t see RVA residents choosing to fly out of RDU is that domestically, RIC is basically one connection from almost anywhere in the US, with nonstops to most major cities. This is the same reason that not a lot of people drive from RVA to DC for flights within the US. Where RVA residents are more willing to drive to avoid connections is for international flights. While RDU does have a solid selection of international flights, it doesn’t come close to IAD in terms of selection of nonstop destinations across the globe. Even the destinations RDU does offer internationally are matched by Dulles and exceeded as a places like London, Paris, Frankfurt and Reykjavik have multiple daily departures from IAD, while RDU only has a single flight each day, or a few flights per week. It has nothing to do with the quality of RDU, it just doesn’t make much sense to drive a similar distance away from RVA for a fraction of the international flights offered at IAD. RDU has a great catchment area, drawing all of eastern NC, as well as a good chunk of southern VA (pretty much anywhere south of Petersburg). And yes the 9 daily 757 flights to Atlanta are helpful for the airport as bleeding traffic to other airports doesn’t show airlines that people want to fly out of RIC. By having people fly out of RIC and connect, it shows airlines that people are choosing to fly out of RIC and can lead to new markets being added. Also, Dulles does have a beautiful check in hall and the international gates are very nice looking. I do agree that the domestic gates in the temporary (although it has become pretty permanent) concourse feel like a dump, compared to the rest of the airport.

Some positive news: Today is the start of Breeze’s flights to Fort Myers. I wasn’t able to check to see how full the flight was before takeoff, however when I checked a few days ago, I’d looked like most of the premium seats had been sold. Hopefully it does well and renewed for next winter. Spirit also is starting flights to Tampa today and flights to Fort Myers start tomorrow. I was able to check the inaugural flights and how full each flight is is posted below. TPA-RIC: 97% full (176 passengers) RIC-TPA: 98% full (178 passengers) RIC-RSW: 97% full (175 passengers) RSW-RIC: 95% full (172 passengers) Hopefully these flight stay as full as the inaugural flight is, however only time will tell. Good signs though from the initial flights though.

4.) All in all - Delta's coming in with 7 additional flights per day - which will be 49 per week. Are these "permanent" additions (meaning, not just for the summer) that will simply start in like May or June? This is just the schedule for the summer season. Likelihood is the schedule will be scaled back during the winter season. 6.) Aside from the 757s - what aircraft are flying the NYC, Detroit and Minneapolis routes? I was watching that "LA Flights" style RIC plane watching video, and it seems like just about everything Delta is flying out of RIC are the little pea-shooters. Are they flying anything bigger than those commuter jets I saw on the video? Delta flies the following jets out of RIC: Boeing 757-200 (190+ seats), Boeing 717-200 (110 seats), Embraer 175 (76 seats), CRJ-900 (76 seats). The 757 is by far the largest plane Delta flies to RIC and it serves as a way for Delta to funnel the most passengers possible into Atlanta, their biggest hub. I don’t foresee the 757 being used on any other routes out of RIC that Delta offers as they really only use it for service to Atlanta or International service out of Atlanta. 7.) So this will be the second NEW Southwest route from RIC, no? What was the one added earlier this year - was is PHX or Vegas? I can't recall. Southwest is coming in with 737's, yes? This isn’t a new route from Southwest as Atlanta is currently served by 2x per day 737 flights. The route added earlier this fall was a returning service to Denver, which flies 1x per day on a 737.

Delta has released their schedule for next summer and the following changes impact RIC. RIC-MSP: Increases from 1x to 2x daily flights. RIC-DTW: Increases from 1x to 2x daily mainline flights on the 717 with 3 overall flights each day. RIC-LGA: Increases from 4x to 5x daily flights. RIC-JFK: Increases from 2x to 3x daily flights. RIC-ATL: Increases from 6x to 9x daily on 757-200. Southwest also seems to have added a 3rd daily flight to Atlanta out of RIC for next summer as well. Overall great news and a lot of additional capacity being offered out of RIC for next summer.