Big News For Little Rock National Airport

[Lexy]

What's kind of scary in a way is how little of a corporate presence Memphis would have sans FedEx, at least for a city that size.

The Austin issue probably has a lot to do with San Antonio being an hour away and having a very large airport with many flights to Mexico. Austin and San Antonio are increasingly become one metro and the SA airport is much larger and on the north side of town nearer Austin. Austin has a much, much smaller Hispanic population than SA. The city of SA is in fact majority Hispanic and half speak Spanish at home.

[vbfl85]

Is it possible that these potential airlines would carry cargo only? That would make Little Rock a more likely choice.

[Sammy00]

It turns my stomach knowing that Little Rock had FedEx, and let it get away.

A recent article in the DemGaz went as far as saying if Little Rock kept FedEx, Memphis and Little Rock would economically be reversed.

I heard a few years back, from unknowledgeable people mind you, that FedEx was looking to relocate at some point.

Haven't heard such since.

[arkansas_buff]

It turns my stomach knowing that Little Rock had FedEx, and let it get away.

A recent article in the DemGaz went as far as saying if Little Rock kept FedEx, Memphis and Little Rock would economically be reversed.

I heard a few years back, from unknowledgeable people mind you, that FedEx was looking to relocate at some point.

Haven't heard such since.

[Aporkalypse]

I don't see FedEx going anywhere. Construction on an expansion of the world headquarters and new hangars are underway right now... in Memphis.

Speaking of Memphis, don't forget a few other big names... such as Auto Zone, International Paper, Fred's Stores, ServiceMaster, Northwest Airlines and Back Yard Burgers. However, I must remind myself that it is FedEx who makes MEM the busiest cargo airport IN THE WORLD! Without it, I wonder if NWAirlines would have located a hub there???

[EJC]

Northwest Airlines is HQ'd in Minneapolis. Memphis is the SE hub. I keep expecting Northwest to pull out and move to a more vibrant airport/economy but they never have.

Is that supposed to be good or bad? I'm not sure I'd trade the high-paying white collar jobs Alltel and Acxiom brought for FedEx, which is larger but after the corporate head is largely made up of lower-wage employees loading boxes. The pilots make pretty good money, though.

FedEx would've been a nice cushion to provide huge numbers of jobs to untrained workers displaced by loss of manufacturing jobs, a problem that happened in the 1970s and 1980s in the LR area and led to some economic depression. LR rebounded by a shift to telecom, IT, and health care which brought higher wages in the 1990s until now.

Losing Alltel would be a bigger deal.

I don't think you'll find many in LR that want it to be more like Memphis, aside from the nice job they've done at rebuilding downtown, something LR has also excelled at.

[Aporkalypse]

I think you're missing the boat on FedEx. It's not just FedEx, it's the enormous amount of development and jobs provided to support FedEx. All the trans-shipment and warehousing and other aspects. FedEx and its supporting facilities far outweighs anything that Alltel/Acxiom has become.

[EJC]

I'm not saying it's not bigger than Acxiom and Alltel, it is. I'm just saying that those two companies pay their workers more than twice the county average, FedEx doesn't. I don't miss the warehousing, etc and low-tier support jobs Fed Ex would've brought. I miss the corporate presence and the 1000-2000 high-paying jobs.

[arkansas_buff]

Northwest Airlines is HQ'd in Minneapolis. Memphis is the SE hub. I keep expecting Northwest to pull out and move to a more vibrant airport/economy but they never have.

[Lexy]

This I realize. However, it is a hub non the less. FedEx set up shop in Memphis in '73. Twelve years later, Republic Airlines would create a hub there. One year later ('86), Republic Airlines was bought out and became Northwest. I'm sure the expansion due to FedEx had a lot to do with Republic's decision to locate a hub in MEM, which is one of the smallest cities in the US with a major airline hub.

[ARtoAK]

MEM is a good airport with a "lucky" break being a hub. I mean that nicely by the way. Most cities their size have since been de-hubbed (like my town of Nashville). Although many, like Nashville, have returned as large Focus Cities for airlines like Southwest. Southwest runs close to 90 flights a day out of here and this airport is a connecting point for many flights going west out of the southeast. That alone has help offset the loss of the AA hub here. Nashville diversified, and continues to do so, becoming a more "international" style airport where they don't have your typical FedEx and UPS flights everyday and that's it. They have attracted daily flights on China Airlines Cargo's Boeing 747's and have become a sort of secondary sorting airport for FedEx. Using their ability to market the airport, they attract a wide diversity of cargo carriers. LIT could follow that model. One that airports like Nashville and Huntsville have carved out and continue to do so.

Could any of you imagine a daily flight on a 747, cargo or not, at LIT? I think it could happen.

From my website linked below:

[RyanA]

There is a reason you have the China Airlines Cargo flight...it's because of Dell and all of their computer parts coming from Asia.

[arkansas_buff]

I did a little investigative work into the number of O&D Passengers at US airports, which are passengers who originate at or are destined for that airport. In other words, it does not count those who are simply there to connect to another flight:

Annual Passenger Totals (O&D Only):

Nashville: 6,043,990

Memphis: 3,116,060

Little Rock: 2,542,297

NWA: 1,172,049

[Aporkalypse]

I did a little investigative work into the number of O&D Passengers at US airports, which are passengers who originate at or are destined for that airport. In other words, it does not count those who are simply there to connect to another flight:

Annual Passenger Totals (O&D Only):

Nashville: 6,043,990

Memphis: 3,116,060

Little Rock: 2,542,297

NWA: 1,172,049

[arkansas_buff]

Interesting, I would've thought Memphis would be as busy as Nashville in boardings. If they ever lose the Northwest hub the passenger airport will be hurting.

There are a surprising number of Memphis area residents that catch the commuter shuttle to LIT because flights there are so much cheaper. A lot of this has to do with Memphis being a Northwest hub and NWA setting the prices. It also lacks a strong discount carrier presence, Southwest does not service Memphis.

[Aporkalypse]

Don't get me wrong... I prefer LIT over MEM any day, but I noticed that Memphis has just landed Frontier (a low cost carrier). They also have 2 AirTran flights to ATL each day.

[Sammy00]

Look for XNA to make a huge leap in passenger numbers if they can ever land a low-cost carrier with a few destinations.

Killing them right now because people just drive down to LR, or over to Tulsa for cheaper tix.

[Lexy]

There is a reason you have the China Airlines Cargo flight...it's because of Dell and all of their computer parts coming from Asia.

[Architect]

I did a little investigative work into the number of O&D Passengers at US airports, which are passengers who originate at or are destined for that airport. In other words, it does not count those who are simply there to connect to another flight:

Annual Passenger Totals (O&D Only):

Nashville: 6,043,990

Memphis: 3,116,060

Little Rock: 2,542,297

NWA: 1,172,049

[Architect]

I know what you mean but compared to LR where Southwest goes direct to Dallas, Houston, St Louis, Chicago, Baltimore/Washington, Phoenix and Las Vegas and Frontier goes to Denver, the two flights AirTran gives to Atlanta and Frontier's flight to Denver doesn't add much. You have to have a much bigger market share to start bringing prices down. Southwest is the largest carrier at LIT, I think it has 35% of the commercial passengers. That pushes the bigger airlines like American, Delta, US Airways, and smaller ones like Continental and Northwest to lower fares to compete.

I do wish LIT would get AirTran service to Atlanta and Orlando but I don't see that happening soon with Southwest's big market share.

[Lexy]

The intersting thing is that as of last year, Nashville had a grand total of around 9.5 million passengers. Roughly a third of the total passengers at BNA connect and the other two-thirds is O&D. Memphis had a little over 11 million total passengers last year. Which that in turn means that the majority of passengers there are there to connect only. Very intersting comparison because Nashville is a Focus City for Southwest which menas that it is a connecting point for flights going norht and west mainly. Memphis is a bonified hub for Northwest Airlines.

On the China Ailrines thing, most cities that have a cargo carrier like that have one dedicated industry that ferries them in each time. Once they open their station at the airport, they then branch out and sell tonnage on the airplane to generate more money for the flights. That's been the case here for the last four years China Airlines has flown here. Dell is just another customer for them. Some of their more recent local clients have been Mercedes Benz, Nashville Zoo, Vaught Aircraft, DHL, Atlas Airlines, and others just to name a few. That China Airlines flight is all a part of the UPS Supply Chain and is actually a UPS flight. In other words, if China Airlines wasn't flying it then UPS would have a daily freighter here doing it. But China Airlines has the contract to do the route and thus, gets to set up shop in Nashville for free basically.

[Lexy]

Aporkalypse,

There are many positives to Southwest's presence, but one negative is that it impacts the ability of legacy carriers to offer mainline service into Little Rock.

[Architect]

That is partly true. Airports receive some money based on how many operations a day they have. For example, if they can have Continental Express flying 17 flights a day to their three hubs as opposed to Contiental Airlines mainline flying three or four flights a day on the 737's, they take the COEX flights because they get more operations a day than they would get with the mainlines flying in daily. This is a very common practice at most airports. One reason the CRJ/ERJ became so popular.

[Aporkalypse]

BTW, IF Southwest were to ever announce operations at XNA - and that's highly likely in the next 10 years - I think its likely AA mainline would be discontinued. Overall boardings would increase significantly though all while lowering ticket prices. This would really hurt Tulsa's traffic. Some have suggested that Springfield would be a target for SWA, but I seriously doubt it - not if they had to pick between it and XNA.

[Architect]

I agree with that you're saying about mainline craft. I disagree about a discount airline choosing NWA over Springfield. The business traffic that dominates XNA is willing to pay a premium as the cost is a corporate rather than private expense, which is why XNA is uncomfortably expensive. Springfield-Branson gets a quite a bit of leisure traffic and as Branson continues to grow as a resort destination I think this makes sense, that's the crowd that would fly Southwest from Dallas, KC, LIT or St Louis.