blopp1234

New destination alert! It appears that Breeze will be adding a ton of new routes out of Fort Myers Florida for the winter, including RIC- Fort Myers atleast 2x per week.

I can guarantee RIC isn’t the only airport jealous of this announcement. I can think that almost every major midwestern airport outside of Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis is jealous RDU got this service, as cities like St Louis, Cleveland and Pittsburgh have only one transatlantic destination and cities like Kansas City, Columbus and Indianapolis have no transatlantic flights. RDU has a large catchment area, which helps a lot as they draw passengers from all of eastern NC, part of the Greensboro area and all of the Raleigh and Durham metro areas, which combined are well over 2 million people. Overall RDU has a catchment area of probably closer to 3 million factoring everywhere it draws from. Thats something RIC will never be able to have as Dulles remains a popular option for people flying internationally from both the Richmond and Hampton Roads areas as it has such a wide selection of destinations. I don’t think all is doom and gloom for RIC though as airlines are showing more interest in the airport by upguaging aircraft on routes out of RIC. Delta put 757-200s on almost every flight to Atlanta, American consistently flies the A321 to Charlotte, and United has started flying A320s instead of A319s to Denver as well as adding in some 76 seat E-170s to Newark instead of the 50 seat CR-550 which RIC consistently flies on that route. Won’t be long before we see increased frequencies or new destinations at the traffic growth rate we’re seeing. While I don’t see any new routes being announced until late fall, I think next spring and summer will be huge for RIC as the success Breeze has had may spark interest from other airlines.

I was disappointed as well to see Breeze drop to 2x weekly on the schedule, as they’ve consistently achieved over 80% full on flights (Spirit is in this range as well), so I’m hoping this is just equipment related. The Hartford increase is due to the Los Angeles flights originating there instead of Providence as Providence is seasonal from RIC. Should be interesting as Hartford has had the higher load factors on the planes than Providence and who knows how 5x per week will go. As far as Sun Country, their route out of RIC is seasonal and will drop during the winter, but should resume again during the summer months next year. This leaves Delta as the sole carrier on that route, which should result in high load factors for Delta this winter.

While I do think that the BRT should eventually be extended to Short Pump, I think even extending it to Parham will be an undertaking as long as it’s done correctly. First, they have to have dedicated lanes, otherwise there’s no advantage to it over regular bus service. There are definitely enough current lanes and enough right of way to where it shouldn’t be a problem to give the BRT dedicated lanes. Second, West Broad would need to undergo a serious rehab, through the addition of sidewalks or multiuse paths on both sides of the road, as well as crosswalks and “beg buttons” at each intersection, especially near the BRT stations. Without pedestrian improvements, the whole point of the BRT goes away as no one will drive, park, then ride the brt in. While this will lead to increased costs, it is necessary in terms of pedestrian safety along West Broad and for the success of the BRT should it get expanded.

It’s possible by amending, city council just amended some of the conditions proposed by the cities Planning Division as part of the SUP process. Doesn’t mean that the height or size of the building will change as a result and the amendments or conditions definitely wasn’t driven by NIMBYs as amendments to conditions and conditions are attached to pretty much every SUP in every municipality across the country in order to mitigate impacts to infrastructure that will occur from the site.

A lot of DC workers are moving there for cheaper housing as they often times only have to go in 1-2 days per week and work remotely the rest of the days. Sort of the same reason those same workers are moving to Richmond in droves.

Delta seems to be averaging load factors of around 70-80% on their 76 seat CRJ-900, which makes it a profitable route for them. I don’t know about Sun Country because I can’t figure out how to access the seat map for their flights.

Just to give a heads up, it looks like the google maps for downtown were updated today, showing some of the new developments. Will be fun to look at all the projects going up in the new images!

Agreed about it passing city council. Hopefully it goes through pretty easily. As far as construction, my best guess is unless they tied the site plan and building permit review into the special use permit, we likely won’t see ground broken until next spring. Again that is just my best guess but usually projects as big as this take a few months to get through the site plan stage.

https://richmondbizsense.com/2023/06/06/apartment-towers-totaling-550-units-next-to-legend-get-planning-commission-nod/ Looks like the planning commission has given the Avery Hall project the go ahead.

Great news. I have no doubt with 4 new breeze routes, plus sun country adding MSP and Spirit adding LAS, the numbers in May will be an all time high for RIC. Was taking a look at the RIC Master Plan again and it shows that the Concourse B expansion (which would add 9 new gates) should start being considered by 2025 and Concourse A (which would add 7 new gates) should be started by 2030. Hopefully passenger numbers continue to increase at this rate as RIC is outperforming the high end projections from the airport master plan.

It is referring to that. Glad to see the goal is to not just get new routes but to make sure preserve existing routes and increase frequencies. My guess for the potential Caribbean destination would be Cancun, Montego Bay or Punta Cana if I had to guess as they had the highest passenger numbers in 2019. Who knows what airline they’ve been talking to regarding the route though. Hopefully we hear an announcement soon though.

While only anecdotal, I’ve gotta say the airport was packed this weekend! Took Breeze out to Cincinnati on Friday and back today and had a great experience. Friday flight was about 90% full on a 108 seat aircraft, which is a great load factor. Even if we can average 3/4 of those numbers during the rest of the summer on non holidays, I think it will make money for breeze. The flight back looked really full as well, which is a great sign and may make Breeze consider adding more midwestern routes from RIC for next summer. Concourse A was packed on Friday and made Richmond feel like a major airport with all the people and the planes constantly coming in and going out. While I couldn’t go into concourse B, there were lots of planes parked at the gates so I assume it was busy as well. The flight back to Richmond gave me some good pics I’ve attached below of the airport. Concourse A once again seemed pretty busy on the inside, even with only 3-4 gates being used at that time. Boarding areas were packed and appeared much busier than Cincinnati. We did have to sit on the tarmac for about 15 minutes waiting for the ground crew to finish helping taxi a departing Allegiant flight headed to St Petersburg. Makes me wonder if the airport doesn’t have enough ground crew to keep up with demand and all the new flights! The appeared success that Breeze seems to be having on their route to the Midwest makes me think that other airlines may try and get a piece of the Richmond to Midwest market. I’d love to see Frontier enter Richmond and add flights to Cleveland, Allegiant add flights to Indy, Breeze add flights to Louisville and/or Columbus and Southwest add flights to St Louis and/or Kansas City. Im not sure exactly how possible some of these routes are but using the right sized aircraft could be a solid short haul flight for an airline to add. Here’s a few more pics from landing and taxiing to the gate.

Wow! Big development announced near Rockwood in Chesterfield. 420 units and it seems to be pretty urban in nature. Frontage right onto Hull should hopefully start to make rt. 360 feel alittle less suburban in this area. Hopefully more of these style developments to come in Chesterfield. https://richmondbizsense.com/2023/05/19/local-builder-planning-hundreds-of-townhomes-apartments-in-rockwood-area-of-chesterfield/

Breeze begins Cincinnati on Friday, on top of Providence, LA, Islip and Jacksonville tomorrow. Sun Country also begins their seasonal twice weekly service to Minneapolis on Friday and Delta starts daily Minneapolis flights next month.

By “heavies” I’m gonna assume you are talking about widebodies. I doubt we see any until there is a contender for transatlantic flights as widebodies rarely fly domestically. Maybe we could see British Airways add a 787 to Heathrow in the future but that’s all I’m seeing in my crystal ball. As far as transatlantic flights go, I think it’s far more likely for RIC to get service transatlantic via a narrowbody aircraft. The latest generation of the A321, which has 180-220 seats has a range of 4,700 miles, more than enough to get from RIC to major cities such as Dublin, London or Paris. That aircraft is what JetBlue uses on all its transatlantic routes and it’s done very well so far. It apparently is much more fuel efficient than the larger wide body aircraft allowing airlines to serve routes outside of your typical IAD-LHR, JFK-LHR, etc. My guess is that when we do EVENTUALLY get transatlantic service, it will likely be on a A321 or 737 Max through Aer Lingus to Dublin as they already operate that aircraft to Hartford, so it would make sense for them to look at other secondary eastern cities that don’t have direct flights to Ireland, such as Providence, Richmond, Norfolk, Pittsburgh, Columbus and Raleigh.

Gonna correct myself to make sure I’m clear about how I worded it, I think Toronto and Cancun are pretty likely. We aren’t far behind other markets in regard to those cities and just because we are behind some cities doesn’t mean we won’t get service before them, just unlikely, but I’m sure the airlines have acres to data that we don’t have so ultimately it will be up to them to decide which routes are chosen. It is still a good idea to have the international gateway ready to go so that RIC can be ready in case an airline comes along and is interested in establishing international service, there are multiple budget airlines in both the Caribbean and Canada so who knows maybe they will want to start service, but it’s hard to know for sure as passenger statistics are difficult to get for international routes.

A lot of it has to do with aircraft availability, which has led to cities that have more demand and larger populations than RIC not having service to some major Caribbean destinations. Another is airline route structures and how airlines operate routes. First is aircraft availability, the likely candidates to expand internationally out of RIC would be JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, Air Canada and Breeze. I’ll get into the reasons why it’s just these airlines and not the legacy carriers (American, Delta, United) in my next paragraph. The delay of the 737 max has hampered Southwests ability to grow as they simply don’t have enough planes in their fleet to keep growing at the rate they were able to prior to the pandemic. This has led them to focus on domestic routes, where demand is stronger year round, rather than focusing on leisure destinations in the Caribbean. The effects of this are that some of the cities where southwest has major operating presence, such as Nashville, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, etc. not having service to some of the major Caribbean vacation destinations such as San Juan, Montego Bay, and Punta Cana. JetBlue would be another candidate as they have a large Caribbean presence, however, outside of Cancun and San Juan, they primarily operate these routes out of their hubs in NYC, Boston, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, so I would find it hard to believe that they would add a route from RIC to anywhere other than Cancun or maybe San Juan (as a long shot). Spirit could add maybe Cancun, Montego Bay or San Juan if we are lucky but they seem to primarily focus their international travel out of larger cities and feed travelers to said large cities (ie. Fort Lauderdale, Orlando) for their international flights. Air Canada could very well add a regional flight to Toronto but I don’t see us getting any destinations in Canada in the near future outside of Toronto as demand simply isn’t there for other routes. Breeze might be the best shot of non Cancun or Toronto international destinations, however, I believe it been mentioned they want their east coast international flights to start in Tampa so I doubt we see any flights outside of maybe a Breeze thru to Cancun starting within the next year. The reason that some of the larger airlines like American, Delta, and United aren’t on the potential list IMO is how they operate their route networks. All three of those airlines and most other larger airlines (Southwest, JetBlue, Spirit) will try to funnel passengers through their hubs as it allows them to fill flights from their hubs, allowing them to operate to more destinations with more frequent flights. This simplifies their operations, making it easier to schedule planes and less likely crews will need to layover in hotels overnight, saving money. Personally (and I hope I’m wrong), I think Cancun (seasonally) and Toronto would be our best bets at international service with maybe San Juan, Punta Cana and Montego Bay seasonally being long shots but not out of the question. Anything else sadly is a pipe dream for now, but honestly most other cities similar to Richmond, such as Columbus, Kansas City, Jacksonville, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, don’t have much international service outside of Toronto and Cancun. It’s not that the demand isn’t there but taking a risk on an international route is far larger than a domestic route, leading to domestic airlines being skeptical to try out a international route unless they are sure it will be successful. Again this it just based on my knowledge of the situation so if anyone directly in the industry has any better explanation I’d love to hear it. I’d also love to be wrong about this and RIC get tons of international routes but I’m trying to be realistic and not get my hopes up too high. So to answer your question, it’s both industry and market related, mostly industry related and the delay to next summer for any possible launch comes strictly from demand. Demand in the winter months for leisure travel dips, and rises in the summer. Most airlines announce their summer routes the November before said summer which is why I’d expect any announcement to come then.

This is a funny route for Breeze. 6 other airlines fly this exact route so unless it’s charter service, it doesn’t fit into their business plan at all. If they try and compete head to head with the likes of American, delta, United, etc. they will be in trouble. As far as international flights, I doubt we will get any starting this summer, so I’d expect if we do get an international route to hear it announced around novemberish, but once again there is no guarantee we will have a route announced.

Big news! Thanks for letting us know @whw53 That makes Richmond far more development progressive than most other US cities.

Still shocked that UA and American fly CRJs and E550s to Chicago sometimes and not strictly e170s and a320/737s. Doesn’t seem like it will be long though until we do get solely A320s and 737s though to Chicago which will be nice not having to fly on regional aircraft. Glad to hear all the flights were full though as airlines will look at where passengers on flights to hubs are going and that can influence which new routes they add to an extent. I’ll be flying Breeze out to Cincinnati in about a month and so far the flight is almost 50% full with a month to go before takeoff so that’s a good sign, even on a shorter haul route that didn’t have a ton of indirect passengers prior to Breeze.

Hopefully they would put dedicated BRT lanes for a potential north-south BRT. Anything will be an improvement over what’s there now though.

Yep, just realized I forgot to attach the link to the original post!

Surprised this slipped under our radar but the updated master plan for the airport was released last month and there are some interesting tidbits. First is the updated master plan map: A lot of it is similar to the previous master plan. Second is that they give a timeline of the proposed improvements. Based on their timeline, the short term (up to 2024) is largely completed, with notable projects including taxiway improvements, the concourse B apron expansion, and deicing pad. The midterm projects are possibly the most interesting (up to 2030) as they include some major developments for the airport, such as the expansions of concourses A & B, and relocation of all the cargo facilities to the other side of runway 16/34. The fact that the airport expects to be moving on these projects by 2030 shows just how ambitious the projections for traffic at the airport are. Elsewhere in the master plan it says that the airport could require up to 40 gates to serve its operations by 2030. The airport also mentions the possibility of transatlantic destinations, with the main city being mentioned being Dublin, Ireland. While they don’t see this happening in the future, I think it could be possible by 2030 through either Breeze, should they decide to fly transatlantic with a long range A-220 or Aer Lingus on their A321 LR, which is already used to serve cities such as Hartford and Cleveland. While none of these improvements are guaranteed, as long as flights from RIC keep leaving with high load factors, the service expansions and new service, will keep coming, leading to the exciting expansions such as Concourse A & B. Hopefully if demand keeps going the way it is, we can get some of these big projects started before 2030.

There’s no need to worry about trains not coming through Main Street station as with the $80 million the city and state put into rehabbing the station, it wouldn’t make sense for the city and state not to make running trains through downtown a priority. Plus Amtrak’s ConnectUs plan has all the new round trips coming from dc in 2030 terminating at MSS. Plus, part of the reason for routing trains downtown is that the A-line won’t have the capacity to handle the full buildout for rail once the s-line and increase in service to Norfolk is added with the completion of the long bridge. From what I’ve heard in the past from people in DRPT, all their plans involve routing all the future southeast higher speed rail through downtown and they’ve said those plans haven’t changed. The biggest hurdle is the price tag for building a new bridge, as the existing won’t be able to meet the demands for the amount of trains Amtrak wants to run through MSS.