American Airlines at Tampa International
AIRPORT
ANALYSIS: American Airlines at Tampa International
December
30, 2018
By:
Michael Gutta
After recently flying from Tampa to Charlotte on
American Airlines, I decided to look at American’s operations at TPA using
publicly available data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics T-100 data
tables. The last full year of published data is from 2017, and the 3 areas I
wanted to study were: number of passengers by destination, load factor by destination,
and aircraft type by departure. In reviewing the available data, I ignored any
seasonality effects (month-to-month variation): I looked at load factor for the
full year, and the number of daily departures and daily passengers are averaged
over a full year. Additionally, I only looked at departing passengers, so the total number of passengers served would
be approximately double (departing and arriving). On to the results…
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| American Airlines aircraft at Charlotte-Douglas International with Charlotte skyline on Dec. 6, 2018 (Michael Gutta) |
American Airlines operated to 7 out of 10 hubs in the network: Charlotte, Chicago-O’Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, Miami, Philadelphia, Phoenix-Sky Harbor, and Washington-National. The 3 hubs not represented as destinations from Tampa International were Los Angeles, New York-JFK, and New York-LaGuardia. Miami is the only American Airlines destination that received American Eagle regional service. American faces no competition to Charlotte and Miami, while all other destinations see competition from a combination of JetBlue, Frontier, Spirit, Southwest, and United.
For the first item analyzed, American served an average
of 4,175 departing passengers a day at TPA with an average of 33 daily
departures. The most popular destination both by daily departures and passengers
was Charlotte, NC at a little over 25% share. An average of 9 daily departures
and 1120 passengers were bound for Charlotte. Dallas-Fort Worth was the second
most popular destination with about 20% share. Six daily departures and 870 passengers
headed to American’s largest hub every day. Finally, in third was Miami, FL
with 15% of the passenger share. Also with an average of 6 daily departures,
610 passengers jetted off to Miami each day in 2017.
The second item under investigation was the load
factor for each destination. While load factor is not the only data piece that
determines if a route is a success or failure, it is easy to calculate and a
widely followed metric. Interestingly, Philadelphia had the highest load factor
of American’s destinations from TPA at 89.8%. This was several points higher
than the second highest load factor: Phoenix had a load factor of 85.9%. Charlotte
and Miami, the only cities served by American at TPA with no competition, had
the lowest load factors at 80.4% and 81.6%. The other 5 cities served likely
have higher load factors due to competition and presumably lower fare prices as
a result of the competition.
The third and final component of this study was
to see which aircraft American employs for routes to and from Tampa. For 2017
American completed 11,913 departures on a total of 10 aircraft types (mainline
and regional). Four of these aircraft types saw very few departures, possibly
due to charters, realignments, diversions, etc. Six unique aircraft types saw
extensive use at TPA though the vast majority of flights were operated by the Boeing
737 and the Airbus A320 family of aircraft. The MD-80 family, Embraer E145, and
“other” aircraft accounted for only 5% of all departures.
Several oddities stood out when looking at
aircraft by destination, likely due to crew bases. MD-80 series aircraft flew
only to Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago-O’Hare. Boeing 737-800 were flown primarily
to Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami, and Chicago-O’Hare. Embraer E145 were flown only
to Miami. Airbus A320 family aircraft were flown to all destinations other than
Chicago-O’Hare.
A review of American Airlines operations at Tampa
International Airport revealed a few interesting bits of data and even more
possibilities for future studies. A multi-year view of aircraft type would be
interesting to see how aircraft types have been phased in and out (looking at
you, MD-80 and B737 Max). It will also be interesting to monitor if Charlotte
and Miami remain unopposed routes moving forward with the continued expansion
of low-cost and ultra-low-cost carriers. Will American consider adding new routes
to the 3 unserved hubs in its network (LA & NY areas)? Would American
consider requesting rights to a Tampa-Havana flight? With many exciting changes
recently at TPA, will American join in with a new service?
Data compiled for the report and figures above
came from the USDOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics T100 Tables:
There is no competition to CLT, but of note, Allegiant offers ULCC service from St Pete to Concord, both about 20 minutes away.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely! And thanks for the comment. I've flown USA-PIE a few times. Easy in and out both of those airports.
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