Richmond International Airport

[eandslee]

Would have loved to see a plane spotter’s videos of the diversions today!

[I miss RVA]

36 minutes ago, Niccckk said:

Woah. a 787 IN RICHMOND?

I know, right? I mean - what's next? An A380? 

[Niccckk]

1 hour ago, eandslee said:

Would have loved to see a plane spotter’s videos of the diversions today!

MAN! I honestly would've gone today if I didn't have work... I would've even paid the outrageous $6 toll on Pocahontas Pkwy to get there ASAP

[Niccckk]

this is awesome! Airport got some pictures for us to drool over

 

[eandslee]

50 minutes ago, Niccckk said:

this is awesome! Airport got some pictures for us to drool over

 

Nice!  Great find!

[I miss RVA]

55 minutes ago, Niccckk said:

this is awesome! Airport got some pictures for us to drool over

 

Beautiful! Now - we need to figure out how to convert these unexpected guests into family members/residents.

Edited August 8, 2023 by I miss RVA

[wrldcoupe4]

Hurry up and get that customs area upgraded already!

[eandslee]

5 minutes ago, wrldcoupe4 said:

Hurry up and get that customs area upgraded already!

They say it won’t be ready until January, but nothing says they can’t start making announcements for International flights already!

Lets go!

[Niccckk]

31 minutes ago, eandslee said:

They say it won’t be ready until January, but nothing says they can’t start making announcements for International flights already!

I really think this fall we can definitely see at least one airline announce international routes. I think it's likely it will be something like JetBlue / Spirit to a Caribbean / Mexican destination since those have the highest PDEW numbers for international flights. Although I think Spirit / JetBlue might hold off for major route announcements until their (potential) merger in Q1 of next year.

[I miss RVA]

Wasn't this (the customs area renovation) supposed to have been complete by this summer? What happened?

[walmartjamesbond]

https://onemileatatime.com/news/breeze-airways-losing-money/
 

Breeze Airways is losing massive amounts of money. 

[BigBobbyG]

Damn, I hate to hear that. I love taking Breeze. I've done so like 5 times now.

[I miss RVA]

So having read the article and the comments, it seems like one of the major problems is that they don't market themselves AT ALL. Apparently outside of "aviation geeks" (like us!) and a few others who follow these sorts of things, folks literally don't know the airline even exists, much less where it flies. 

Without looking at (or having any real understanding of) airline statistics, it would seem that RVA/RIC is more than pulling its weight in being an uber-successful market for Breeze - at least from the standpoint of putting fannies in seats. Perhaps with proper marketing, we could do even better! At least for now, no one can say "no one flies Breeze in/out of Richmond". 

[georgeglass]

On 8/9/2023 at 2:54 PM, I miss RVA said:

So having read the article and the comments, it seems like one of the major problems is that they don't market themselves AT ALL. Apparently outside of "aviation geeks" (like us!) and a few others who follow these sorts of things, folks literally don't know the airline even exists, much less where it flies. 

Without looking at (or having any real understanding of) airline statistics, it would seem that RVA/RIC is more than pulling its weight in being an uber-successful market for Breeze - at least from the standpoint of putting fannies in seats. Perhaps with proper marketing, we could do even better! At least for now, no one can say "no one flies Breeze in/out of Richmond". 

We are flying home this morning from Hartford BDL to RIC on Breeze and the flight is pretty full. Granted, it is a Breeze Thru to Phoenix. My husband is up here every other week for work and the flight is always pretty full. When we flew up Monday, it seemed the plane was mostly full of people from RIC. We did notice some people deplane from Phoenix but hard to say how full the plane would have been. 

 

One other observation...BDL is a much busier airport than RIC and that surprised me. Looking at their stats I believe they'll serve about 7 million passengers this year. They compete with Logan, but I guess we have all the DC metro airports and Norfolk to contend with. Still, to me it seems if BDL can do 7 million then we should be able to also. We just need more service from carriers....oh and more amenities, shops in the airport that have longer hours...and consolidate the security lines.

[eandslee]

55 minutes ago, georgeglass said:

We are flying home this morning from Hartford BDL to RIC on Breeze and the flight is pretty full. Granted, it is a Breeze Thru to Phoenix. My husband is up here every other week for work and the flight is always pretty full. When we flew up Monday, it seemed the plane was mostly full of people from RIC. We did notice some people deplane from Phoenix but hard to say how full the plane would have been. 

 

One other observation...BDL is a much busier airport than RIC and that surprised me. Looking at their stats I believe they'll serve about 7 million passengers this year. They compete with Logan, but I guess we have all the DC metro airports and Norfolk to contend with. Still, to me it seems if BDL can do 7 million then we should be able to also. We just need more service from carriers....oh and more amenities, shops in the airport that have longer hours...and consolidate the security lines.

Great observations and all very true.  Also, thanks for the reports of passenger loads. 
 

Whenever I travel by air, I always compare RIC to the airports I fly to. Like right now, I’m sitting at the Dayton airport.  Airfield is huge, parallel runways, super tall ATC…but I don’t think they move as many passengers as RIC (<2M/yr); however the terminal and gate areas seem larger than RIC (DAY only has 24 gates).  It’s easy to get into and out of, similar to RIC. Things seem more spread out here though…maybe that’s why it just feels bigger.
 

RIC should be doing at least 10M passengers in my opinion, but we aren’t. As the Metro area grows and as air service increases, we’ll get closer to 10M passengers in short order.  Just need more airlines to believe in RIC and take a chance on us. If you add service to RIC, the passengers will come…as long as the word gets out that the services are available at RIC.  Looking forward to growth and whatever else the future will bring! 

[wrldcoupe4]

How many people live in our catchment area? How do our passenger counts compare to similarly sized ones? Is it possible to quantify? 

[I miss RVA]

1 hour ago, wrldcoupe4 said:

How many people live in our catchment area? How do our passenger counts compare to similarly sized ones? Is it possible to quantify? 

I think RIC's catchment is more than 2 million. Idk the exact estimate - but I believe it's north of 2 million.

Agreed - an analysis of passenger volume vis a vis catchment could be very revealing. Not sure where to source such data through.

[Flood Zone]

4 hours ago, georgeglass said:

One other observation...BDL is a much busier airport than RIC and that surprised me.

As I understand it, BDL is pretty much smack between the Hartford metro area and Springfield, Mass. So that's like 2M people are so in fairly close proximity. And, as you said, only Logan to contend with. A bit different than our situation. Plus, Hartford has a go-to industry (insurance) and is pretty affluent; correlates well with air travel.

2 hours ago, eandslee said:

Just need more airlines to believe in RIC and take a chance on us. If you add service to RIC, the passengers will come…as long as the word gets out that the services are available at RIC.

This.

I'll go ahead and admit that I'm a bad UP poster. Had a professional conference and decided to take my family along, extend the stay, turn it into a vacation. Limited non-stop service to my destination from RIC, especially when compared with Dulles. And roundtrip using Dulles was about $500-700 cheaper. And I've got family nearby Dulles where we could park our car for free. Kind of a no-brainer, sorry to say. Better and cheaper options for RIC obviously would have caused a different result.

[I miss RVA]

31 minutes ago, Flood Zone said:

Limited non-stop service to my destination from RIC, especially when compared with Dulles. And roundtrip using Dulles was about $500-700 cheaper. And I've got family nearby Dulles where we could park our car for free. Kind of a no-brainer, sorry to say. Better and cheaper options for RIC obviously would have caused a different result.

This has been a long-term problem for RIC and has held us back for decades. For the longest time, flights were ALWAYS cheaper out of DCA and IAD. There have ALWAYS been more direct flights out of both airports. It's a brutal hill to try to climb, much less crest. We'll never "conquer" that hill - but we have to make more inroads to not lose out the tremendous potential passenger volume we've lost out on over the years.

Seems like a pretty crappy chicken-and-egg problem that RIC has faced for as long as I can remember (and that other -- obviously bigger -- airports don't have) -- airlines won't come to RIC without "proven" passenger volume. But the lack of flights (whether destinations or frequency) and a lack of legitimately competitive pricing has -- until recently -- tamped down potential passenger volume.

Maybe that's why we've been hanging out collective hats so intensely on Breeze, because they have done what NO other carrier has done - they've gone all-in on planting a BIG flag at RIC and have turned the airport into an unofficial (but damn near defacto) "mini-hub". The market has been slowly responding to the success Breeze has been having flying in/out of RIC. We just need Breeze to really becoming not just solvent but profitable to maintain -- and grow -- their presence at RIC. If we can crack 5 million passengers this year -- and we're still on pace to do so based on year-over-year percent growth vs 2022 -- we'd be taking a major step forward in perhaps landing more service from existing carriers - and drawing new carriers to RIC.

If the master plan somehow can be actualized due to continued, explosive growth in passenger volume, we'll see those concourse extensions and additional gates installed. And I really believe that getting to 44 gates by 2030 will go a LONG LONG LONG way to boosting our chances to grab even better service from existing carriers - and to grab new carriers not currently serving the Richmond market. Resuming international service here - and then expanding it - will also go a long way toward the growth we need to move up the airport totem-pole, despite facing much stiffer competition than airports such as Hartford's faces.

All the more reason I keep up with my mantra for the airport:

44 GATES!!!

Edited August 11, 2023 by I miss RVA

[Niccckk]

1 hour ago, I miss RVA said:

This has been a long-term problem for RIC and has held us back for decades. For the longest time, flights were ALWAYS cheaper out of DCA and IAD. There have ALWAYS been more direct flights out of both airports. It's a brutal hill to try to climb, much less crest. We'll never "conquer" that hill - but we have to make more inroads to not lose out the tremendous potential passenger volume we've lost out on over the years.

Seems like a pretty crappy chicken-and-egg problem that RIC has faced for as long as I can remember (and that other -- obviously bigger -- airports don't have) -- airlines won't come to RIC without "proven" passenger volume. But the lack of flights (whether destinations or frequency) and a lack of legitimately competitive pricing has -- until recently -- tamped down potential passenger volume.

Maybe that's why we've been hanging out collective hats so intensely on Breeze, because they have done what NO other carrier has done - they've gone all-in on planting a BIG flag at RIC and have turned the airport into an unofficial (but damn near defacto) "mini-hub". The market has been slowly responding to the success Breeze has been having flying in/out of RIC. We just need Breeze to really becoming not just solvent but profitable to maintain -- and grow -- their presence at RIC. If we can crack 5 million passengers this year -- and we're still on pace to do so based on year-over-year percent growth vs 2022 -- we'd be taking a major step forward in perhaps landing more service from existing carriers - and drawing new carriers to RIC.

If the master plan somehow can be actualized due to continued, explosive growth in passenger volume, we'll see those concourse extensions and additional gates installed. And I really believe that getting to 44 gates by 2030 will go a LONG LONG LONG way to boosting our chances to grab even better service from existing carriers - and to grab new carriers not currently serving the Richmond market. Resuming international service here - and then expanding it - will also go a long way toward the growth we need to move up the airport totem-pole, despite facing much stiffer competition than airports such as Hartford's faces.

All the more reason I keep up with my mantra for the airport:

44 GATES!!!

AS  much as I agree that it would be nice to have more airlines... there really isn't many more to add that would benefit us.. Alaska & Frontier are the last domestic carriers I can think of that don't serve us. 
To be honest what we need to be looking at is the big 4 to continue expanding out of here. PDEW numbers are high enough for Southwest to start BNA & DAL out of here (...and start back up MCO...), for Delta to serve SLC out of here, and jetBlue to serve LGA to compete with AA & DL.

The thing currently holding Southwest back is their ongoing pilot shortage, which is why I think they stopped TPA, MCO, and DEN (temporarily)... I do have faith that they will bring those routes back, because there is a lot of time slots left at SWAs gates where they can add some more routes in. 

The one thing I LOVE about Breeze right now is they are showing that these long and thin routes are successful out of here, and there is demand for them. As much as I love Breeze, their route network is not nearly as big as other airlines, so it makes sense why Spirit is able to do DAILY out of here, since Las Vegas is a big focus city for them, with a LOT of connections out of LAS, which Breeze cannot offer at all. Having legacy carriers like United start SFO to compete with Breeze would, first, bring down cost, and second, would open SO MANY more doors for connections. You could do RIC-SFO-HND (Tokyo) with just one stop, instead of a longer itinerary such as RIC-DEN-SFO-HND or RIC-EWR-SFO-HND. And you can apply this with other airlines as well. I really do believe once jetBlue & Delta keep getting deliveries of their A220s, we can see them expand quite a bit out of here, since the A220 is PERFECT for long and thin routes like ones here.

[I miss RVA]

2 hours ago, Niccckk said:

AS  much as I agree that it would be nice to have more airlines... there really isn't many more to add that would benefit us.. Alaska & Frontier are the last domestic carriers I can think of that don't serve us. 
To be honest what we need to be looking at is the big 4 to continue expanding out of here. PDEW numbers are high enough for Southwest to start BNA & DAL out of here (...and start back up MCO...), for Delta to serve SLC out of here, and jetBlue to serve LGA to compete with AA & DL.

The thing currently holding Southwest back is their ongoing pilot shortage, which is why I think they stopped TPA, MCO, and DEN (temporarily)... I do have faith that they will bring those routes back, because there is a lot of time slots left at SWAs gates where they can add some more routes in. 

The one thing I LOVE about Breeze right now is they are showing that these long and thin routes are successful out of here, and there is demand for them. As much as I love Breeze, their route network is not nearly as big as other airlines, so it makes sense why Spirit is able to do DAILY out of here, since Las Vegas is a big focus city for them, with a LOT of connections out of LAS, which Breeze cannot offer at all. Having legacy carriers like United start SFO to compete with Breeze would, first, bring down cost, and second, would open SO MANY more doors for connections. You could do RIC-SFO-HND (Tokyo) with just one stop, instead of a longer itinerary such as RIC-DEN-SFO-HND or RIC-EWR-SFO-HND. And you can apply this with other airlines as well. I really do believe once jetBlue & Delta keep getting deliveries of their A220s, we can see them expand quite a bit out of here, since the A220 is PERFECT for long and thin routes like ones here.

From your keyboard to God's eyes, my friend!

[Merrittk92]

Alrighty! ORF comes in at 466.5 for July. A record month for ORF! Where will RIC land? I’m guessing RIC hits 475! Anyone else care to guess?? 
 

Also, why is it ORF’s numbers are always released 2 weeks before RIC’s?? Always!! 

[eandslee]

7 hours ago, Merrittk92 said:

Alrighty! ORF comes in at 466.5 for July. A record month for ORF! Where will RIC land? I’m guessing RIC hits 475! Anyone else care to guess?? 
 

Also, why is it ORF’s numbers are always released 2 weeks before RIC’s?? Always!! 

That number is going to be tough for RIC to beat!  Those are crazy numbers!  RIC saw quite a few flight cancellations in July and not sure ORF experienced the same.  With that said, I’m not that optimistic.  I hope I’m wrong, but I see RIC at about 425K (just a number that popped into my head).  
 

ORF’s numbers always comes out 2 weeks before RIC because RIC does its monthly meetings with the commission on the last Tuesday of each month. ORF must do theirs 2 weeks before RIC. It’s just the timing of their meetings, I guess.  RIC has the numbers for July already, they just don’t release them until the end of the month.  

[Flood Zone]

44 minutes ago, eandslee said:

ORF’s numbers always comes out 2 weeks before RIC because RIC does its monthly meetings with the commission on the last Tuesday of each month. ORF must do theirs 2 weeks before RIC. It’s just the timing of their meetings, I guess.  RIC has the numbers for July already, they just don’t release them until the end of the month.

Good info.

And I thought it was because Norfolk is closer to the sea, i.e., a Costar coefficient is in the equation somewhere.

[eandslee]

RIC’s July statistics just got posted. It’s really good, but not good enough to beat ORF in July. ORF had about 466K passengers. Flight cancellations plagued RIC last month.  Here’s the raw data: 

 

Edited August 29, 2023 by eandslee