Durham will increase their skyline by 50% when they add a third building.
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I wouldn’t hold your breath on that 
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To be fair, Air France gets a pass since they are no ‘merican. But domestic airlines should know better.
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T1 is gonna be the low cost terminal, with Breeze, Sprit, Alaska, Avelo, and southwest there finally will be some action in that terminal. When I was on a flight a few months ago from 1 it’s was a very quiet and empty, this will improve. I still see Avelo creating a hub here though.
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Avelo has an operating base here but they haven’t had very good success. On the other hand, Breeze has been doing much better. They’ve hit I believe 18 destinations now (Avelo serves 6). They said once they hit 20, it makes most sense for them to open an operating base here. They’re opening a base at RSW and they’ll only have 19 destinations. Hartford also has 19, Norfolk at 18, New Orleans at 10, Providence at 17. We’re on par with their other bases so far.
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Those airports all small midsized airport, were they biggest one they should invest a lot more in us. T1 has no limit on expansion as it has more space, they should be treated as a crucial asset for cheap airlines.
Avelo is risky, if you fly Spirit if you’ll become one. Breeze would love us
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I flew Breeze for the first time recently and was impressed with the operation. Did not feel all that budget. Hope they will keep increasing flights here.
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Avelo likely won’t grow to be big, but Breeze has gained the support and attention of many. I think Breeze is well on their way to gain a higher status like JetBlue and Alaska.
I think Breeze choose Raleigh to grow here in fact I hope they set up a hub someday a terminal 1, same for Alaska were one of there few east coast location we’d be great for hub there. Avelo may not survive. There hope for terminal 1 if I was in office I advocate for a hub at RDU even if its a smaller airlines it would benefit the area a lot.
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Breeze is 1 or 2 destinations away from opening a base here and RDU already has more destinations than some of their bases. RDU has major importance to Alaska, so if they do add east coast ops, this may be it, but it might be so they can connect people from the west to the Caribbean. Alaska partnered with RDU in order to determine the proper runway length for full capacity flights to Seattle. You’d have to wonder, why not Delta since they also run the route, have more destinations, and fly to several international destinations (via partners)
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More competition is good plus, Tech and all the tech bros live in Seattle and San Fran, and now we got our share of the techies here. Its a major plus for our economy.
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I’d say this is quite some interesting data…
Connecting passengers at RDU in 2023 (Jan - April):
Jan - 114
Feb - 148
Mar - 128
Apr - 290
4 month total - 680
Connecting passengers at RDU in 2024 (Jan - April):
Jan - 1,104
Feb - 1,104
Mar - 447
Apr - 4,685
4 month total - 7,340
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That’s number you’d see at an airport hub maybe a little more but if so many are connecting here than this a good sign!
You probably wanna know why Im so fixated on making a RDU a hub simple Economy it would help us land more Fortune 500 it doesn’t matter how big the airline is it could be as big as Delta or as small as Breeze doesn’t matter its a hub. The reasons AA didn’t work here so long ago was because of our small population, but we can better handle it today.
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Here’s the monthly passengers data
Passengers at RDU in 2023 (Jan - April):
Jan - 884,984
Feb - 890,880
Mar - 1,150,491
Apr - 1,183,849
4 month total - 4,110,204
12 month total - 14,523,996
Passengers at RDU in 2024 (Jan - April):
Jan - 967,616 (9.3%)
Feb - 986,051 (10.7%)
Mar - 1,230,063 (6.9%)
Apr - 1,275,307 (7.7%)
4 month total - 4,459,037 (8.5%)
12 month total - 15,758,536 (estimated)
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it wasn’t a population issue of the Raleigh area at all. There were a lot of other issues, but not being big enough a city is completely wrong. Read up on some of the other posts by people way earlier (years ago) in this same topic. Super interesting history stuff.
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I’ll try to find it, all I know as of now is that not a lot of people were using it.
I gotta say that I was impressed last Monday morning when I flew out on a 6AM flight. I suppose it was due to the early week mad-rush or something but the TSA at RDU had it under control despite the rather large volume of passengers at the airport at 4:45AM. They had the sniffing dogs out as passengers walked by 3 at a time and on their way to the ID check. Then, because of the dogs, nothing had to come out of our bags and we were able to keep our shoes on as we walked through the old school detectors. I was through security in about 8 minutes. Bravo RDU!
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Data from 6/6/24:
FRA was at 100% capacity (255 seats)
LHR was at 100% capacity (273 seats)
CDG was at 100% capacity (324 seats)
KEF was at 93% capacity (149 seats).
Knowing this, the data above, and how much more international growth is still on the horizon, could 2024 be the year RDU is fully re-defined? This could be the first steps towards a hub/hotspot. There was HUGE growth in connecting passengers from 2023 to 2024 and if the internationals continue to do well, RDU may find itself in a situation where it is seeing lots of international carriers coming in and that would cause the cycle to just repeat. More flights → more connecting pax → more flights → more connecting pax
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