Tampa Bay to Washington DC Metro Area

ROUTE ANALYSIS: Tampa Bay to Washington DC Metro Area

February 24, 2019

By: Michael Gutta

After my previous data scrubbing and report about Southwest Airlines’s activities at Tampa International Airport revealed their most popular destination to be Baltimore/Washington International Airport, I decided to look more closely at the Tampa Bay to DC metropolitan area air travel market. For this investigation I considered all commercial flights between any combination of St. Petersburg-Clearwater (PIE) and Tampa (TPA) to Baltimore-Washington (BWI), Washington-National (DCA), and Washington Dulles (IAD) during the year 2017, the last full year of published data. For this year, there actually were no regularly scheduled flights departing St. Petersburg-Clearwater (PIE) to the DC Metro area. I also only looked at commercial passenger carriers, so the cargo numbers reported are only for belly cargo, not scheduled cargo carriers.

United B737-800 (N18243) departing runway 19R at TPA on 12/8/2018 (Michael Gutta).

For 2017, this city pair was served by five airlines: American, Southwest, United, JetBlue, and Spirit, with Southwest serving both BWI and DCA in this market. So, what did the data reveal? Of the nearly 800,000 passengers departing Tampa for the DC metro area in 2017, nearly half chose to fly through BWI, one-third chose to fly through DCA in the heart of DC, and only one-fifth of passengers chose to fly through IAD. This is of course dependent also on the airlines serving each airport. While broken down further in a little bit, this means BWI received 1,030 passengers daily from Tampa, DCA saw 700 passengers daily, and IAD was the arrival airport for 430 daily passengers, on average over the full year. Also notable was that with over 1.1million pounds of belly cargo and mail, about 75% of this passed through BWI and only 3% was routed through DCA.

To dive a bit deeper, I looked at the passenger data by which carrier was flown, keeping the Southwest traffic to BWI separate from the Southwest traffic to DCA. This revealed that Southwest Airlines to BWI was the leading airline-destination pair, capturing 42% of the market. United Airlines flying to IAD was the second leading airline-destination pair with 20% of the market, less than half that of the leader. Closely behind in third was American Airlines to DCA with 17%, followed by Southwest Airlines to DCA at 12%. The remaining 10% of the market was split between Spirit to BWI, JetBlue to DCA, and the Other category which I deemed as either aircraft repositions, weather diversions, or charter operations.

The third objective of this research was to review the load factor for each carrier in this market. Once again, Southwest led the way, however this was the service to DCA coming in at 90% load factor. United was again, impressively, at second place with 89.8% load factor. JetBlue to DCA, American to DCA, and Southwest to BWI all placed in the mid-80% range. Finally, Spirit was dragging a bit from the pack at 77.8% load factor. It should be pointed out here that American ranked second in annual departures at 1210 compared to United with 1028, but United ranked higher in annual passengers with 22,000 more. It’s a bit surprising that Southwest to DCA and United to IAD show load factors at least five percentage points higher than American Airlines. This may have been achieved through lower prices, more favorable schedules & connections, or customer loyalty to a specific airline.

The fourth and final component I wanted to explore was the aircraft type used by each carrier in this city pair. Somewhat surprisingly, no regional affiliates operated flights on this city pair in 2017, so all traffic was on mainline jets. JetBlue operated the smallest aircraft on this route with all E190 service. Southwest operated 3 aircraft types to BWI, but only the 737-700 to DCA. American and Spirit chose to fly mostly the A319 with some A320 service. United, however, flew the larger 737-900, 737-800, and the A320. United chose to fly larger airplanes on this routing with less frequency than American and was still able to keep them more full than American.

In conclusion, the data show that Southwest is by far the dominant carrier for the Tampa to DC metropolitan air travel market. United Airlines placed second in market share with a strong load factor. American seems to be struggling a bit showing a low load factor into the airport closest to the DC city center.  For 2017, JetBlue and Spirit seem to be niche players with each only capturing about 5% of the passenger share.

American B737 Max8 (N306RC) after landing on runway 19R at TPA on 2/23/2019 (Michael Gutta)

So, what could come next for this destination? The notable American carriers that are absent include Delta, Frontier, and Allegiant. None of these seem to be an obvious fit to jump into this market segment. Delta serves only a few “non-hub” cities out of DCA: Lexington, KY, Madison, WI, and Omaha, NE year-round. Delta also lists seasonal service from DCA to Miami and Orlando. Would Delta perhaps add a seasonal service to Tampa as well? Next on the list is Frontier which serves only Denver out of DCA, has minimal planned service out of BWI for 2019, and only serves 4 cities out of IAD. Dulles may actually make sense, with Frontier already serving Orlando and given that United has a strong load factor from Dulles to Tampa. Finally, Allegiant has service scheduled to begin from Sarasota, FL to BWI on February 22, 2019. This is near the Tampa market, but not very close for Tampa or St. Petersburg travelers. If Allegiant entered the PIE to BWI market they would essentially be competing head-to-head with another ULCC (Spirit which serves TPA). Other potential changes for this market could include JetBlue increasing their service from the E190 to the Airbus A320 series. Finally, would Southwest add flights (if possible) or increase aircraft size to DCA? With a strong load factor, they may desire to grow at DCA, since BWI is already close to maxed out on frequency with 7 daily flights.

Let me know your thoughts on this blog post and potential future topics involving the Tampa International Airport, the DC metropolitan area airports, or really anything aviation related.

Data compiled for the report and figures above came from the USDOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics T100 Tables:

https://www.transtats.bts.gov/Tables.asp?DB_ID=111