@jakespotter Thanks for the helpful insight into the nuts and bolts of airport operations. Good to know!
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One of my concerns is, how will T2’s international gate expansion work? Would they have to build really long jetbridges from the existing terminal in order to keep them operational? Would another pier take over all of the international ops until the international pier opens and the WB go there? And how would RDU optimize international gate usage if it became an issue? Would aircraft need to be towed to the widebody gates on the D concourse? Those are just my big concerns for now. We’ll have to see what RDU plans on doing to make that stuff work.
why is RDU appealing as an “international hub”?
For all the same reasons it is appealing as a top growing city in the US.
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Plus it picks up additional traffic from Eastern NC
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Well, it is one of the largest “growing” cities on the east coast that’s a hop, skip and jump to the EU.
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I get all that I am just not sure I have heard of this before. Are there any other examples of non domestic hub airports in the US being international hubs? Ive never heard of this concept is all.
Avelo has increased its presence though I’m sure when the time comes and there airline grows that probably give us our hub status back. They recently increased there operations base so they really like us. Low cost carrier could make us competitive to American.
This depends on your definition of “hub.” Do you mean, base for an airline? Or do you mean by number of international destinations? If it’s the latter, there are a few airports that fit the bill: San Jose, Fort Lauderdale, Austin, Cincinnati (albeit a legacy Hub), Baltimore, and Pittsburgh (again, another former Hub that kept its main TATL flights).
Of those, I would point to Austin and Baltimore as the main outliers here. Baltimore has flights to London, Reykjavik, and Frankfurt, while Austin has London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Mexico City. One is fast growing. One is midway between DC and Philadelphia. Both have their strengths and weaknesses at being mid-scale airports leveraging some major TATL routes.
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@rucker, it’s really 2 different considerations. Sure, American-based airlines will have hubs in the US and many will have international flights that will fly in/out of those hubs. But there are international airlines that are not based in the US and don’t have US hubs.
Got it. Seems we still wont come close touching the number of international flights of most of the major US airports that also serve as airline hubs, so the term “hub” is all relative I guess.
Agreed, but our “hub” is probably different than someone in Atlanta or NYC talking about “hub”. Adding even a half-dozen more international flights to RDU would be a BIG uptick and great for our region!
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But keep in mind focus cities, and OB can act like a hub in a way at airports, for example, Balitimore is an operating base for Southwest, even though that company has no hubs.
“Hub” may not be the appropriate term here, but the combination of a healthy local life sciences industry and three major universities certainly plays a role in boosting demand for international non stop routes.
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Yes, the airport needs to be expanded, and instead of insisting making T1 a crappy budget terminal, could we at least make it more aesthetic looking maybe similar to the Evans Terminal in Detroit Metro Airport or something like KCI (Kansas City International Airport)? Doesn’t have to be too fancy, but the carpeted floors as well as the low ceilings makes the terminal feel really cramped and low-quality. Doesn’t have to be fancy as T2, but I would like to see some spicing up.
The airport authority essentially cheaped out on the renovations done to T1 between 2011 and 2014. If I recall, it was about $50-67 million. Same old building from 1982 with little done to it. That’s what Southwest Airlines wanted. But now you see them flying out of modern terminals (hence see DTW, I mentioned, LGA, KCI (or MCI), and BNA in Nashville is about to go over a huge makeover which will cost billions.
T2 was built at a cost of $570 million which is equivalent to nearly $900 million in today’s dollars,
and T1’s expansion to 21 or 25 gates was first planned in 2019 at a cost of $500 milllion which is equivalent to $600 million in today’s dollars, so hopefully this will be a major overhaul and I hope to see some widebody gates, perhaps? Or will it remain an all-domestic terminal? I mean the arrival and departure roadways are not split so it’s likely that it will remain all-domestic.
~Tolbs
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People on here talking about RDU as a “hub” but we are not…A hub in the airline business is a connecting city where lots of flights come in from all over and people connect to other flights. Each of the legacy airlines AA, Delta, and United have hubs in cities we all probably travel through: Charlotte, Miami, Philly, Dallas, Chicago, Phoenix, LA, and NY for American, Newark, Dulles, Houston, Chicago, Denver, Chicago, San Francisco for United, and Atlanta, Detroit, New York, Minneapolis, Salt Lake, and LA for Delta.
RDU is none of those, and I’ve read that board members of RDU don’t WANT to be a hub, they embrace nobody really having a dominant position at RDU the way American used to in the late 80’s to mid 90’s and the competition is good for business. There are some growing low cost airlines that are ramping up service to RDU (like Avelo, which has RDU as a “base”), but most do not use RDU as a connecting point, they just see a lot of potential for traffic flying to and from the area. Some connections are possible, but that’s not even the way these low cost airlines market RDU.
And as far as someone asking why is RDU seen as a potential “international hub” that’s really not what’s happening AT ALL. we may becoming a popular international SPOKE (airlines like hubs and spokes), with flights to an increasing number of international cities like London, Paris, Frankfurt, Montreal, Toronto, Mexico City, Cancun, Reykjavik, and Bahamas, but all those flights actually go back to real “hubs” where we can connect through those airlines’ networks, the non-US equivalents of hubs for Delta, AA, and United.
It is great we have so many nonstop flights, and that doesn’t look like it’s slowing down. Definitely getting other places’ attention, and RDU even has someone that pitches stats to airlines to encourage them to consider flying here if they don’t already, or to add flights. The airport authority has a marketing budget to underwrite airlines that start new service on routes the airport authority has identified as cities they’d like to have nonstop service to, so there’s ways to minimize risk for the airlines to fly here for a year or two.
From what I’ve read. RDU is on track to possibly exceed it’s 2019 passenger numbers, which were their highest ever. But a “hub” we are not.
RDU has the best consultants out there helping them plan out their future. It’s a complicated and constrained thing (both financially and from a geographic/physical limitation perspective). Think about how 440 is being widened: it all has to be done in a certain sequence and certain alternatives and decisions make the most sense for timing and money. RDU isn’t a city department of aviation (thankfully) so it must pay its own way, but doesn’t have to compete with other departments within the city for money either. All the cities that have airports run out of the city or county as a department of aviation, in my opinion, those airports have a ton of problems, management problems, and expansion problems. I’m looking at you: Charlotte, Chicago, Austin, Miami, New York, and others. Be thankful we are set up the way we are. They are making progress.
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RDU is a focus city for Delta Air Lines and American Airlines somewhat. I know both airlines have been beefing up the demand for the airport (with the exception of AA cutting numerous flights at AUS), it’s a strong economy with growing demand, and it IS on track to break 2019 passenger levels. Hence, see Apple coming, and I expect American, Delta or LCC, to add more flights in the coming years. For those who think RDU is too close to ATL to become a real hub, take a look at JFK/LGA and BOS. They are 185 miles apart compared to ATL and RDU which are 350 miles apart. And if Delta wants to build RDU up to a hub some day, It will likely end up like BOS or SEA, not like ATL, DTW, MSP, or SLC with lots of flights.
~Tolbs
Yes, Delta scaled down to only 2 focus cities after COVID. RDU and Austin. They dropped Cincinnati and San Jose they had announced a few years back. It’s kind of mysterious what Delta means by “focus city” because in Austin, other than building what I’ve heard is a very lovely new lounge, they have done really nothing of adding any substantial flights anywhere.
Delta has been slow to regrow RDU to its former stature before COVID, but that’s largely because they flew smaller regional jets to many business destinations from RDU, and business travel just hasn’t come back yet the way leisure travel has “taken off”.
AA and Delta are neck and neck for who has the most market share at RDU. Last I read it was within 1% of each other, both hovering around 30%, with the other airlines splitting up the pie.
Would love to have Delta ramp up in Raleigh, but it seems so far that focus city to them means concerted effort to have sales staff marketing to customers in focus cities, rather than automatically “flooding the zone” with new flights in a focus city.
American for 2 years did exactly that in Austin, added dozens and dozens of new nonstop destinations, but in the past 45 days just cancelled more than half of them. Lot of speculation all those flight additions were to keep Delta out, but they pulled the plug since they need those planes and pilots in the Northeast since their alliance with JetBlue was torpedoes by the Biden Administration after being previously approved by the Trump Administration…
Delta has announced a flight attendant crew base in Raleigh starting in Spring 2024, after opening a season base here in Spring 2023. Remains to be seen how many flight attendants they’ll have transfer in.
I expect both AA and Delta will continue to grow in Raleigh, and Avelo seems to be doing well. The new Mexico City flight has connecting transfer potential at RDU thru the SkyTeam alliance with Delta and Air France.
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It’s worth noting that most of the flights delta did keep upgraded to larger aircraft as well. And considering capacity increase on CDG (via alliance partner), a new flight to MEX (via alliance partner), and resumed flights to CUN, it wouldn’t entirely surprise me if they are finally anticipating on re-building here. I hope SAN is part of that.
Also worth noting, Avelo has an operating base here. They currently base around 75 crew & 2 aircraft here I believe, and plans to add around 50 crew and up to 5 aircraft by end of 2024
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