Atlanta to San Francisco Market Share Surprise?

ROUTE ANALYSIS: Atlanta to San Francisco Market Share Surprise?

July 29, 2019

By: Michael Gutta

In this article from the Pelham Aviation blog I looked not at past travel data but at future schedule numbers for the route from Atlanta to San Francisco. During some searching on Google Flights for potential vacation destinations I was very surprised at the available service between these Delta and United strongholds. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International (ATL) is of course the world’s busiest airport and Delta Air Line’s largest hub. Meanwhile, San Francisco International (SFO) is dominated by United Airlines. When I began my search, I expected to see a somewhat even split of flights for the two US legacy carriers. I also wanted to find out capacity by day of the week, and I wanted to find the largest aircraft on the route. I was quite surprised by the search results, and also found a third airline option for this route.

Delta Air Lines Boeing 757-200 N681DA departing runway 19R at TPA on 12/8/2018 (Michael Gutta).

The data for this study came from Google Flights and each airline’s own schedule website. I reviewed and compiled the available flights for the week starting on Sunday, August 11^th, 2019. It should be noted that I only considered ATL and SFO airports. I did not expand the search to include San Jose (SJC) or Oakland (OAK), both of which have service to Atlanta. San Jose has service to Atlanta on Delta, while Oakland has service on both Delta and Southwest Airlines. The first thing I wanted to compile was the weekly available seats by airline. As the pie chart below shows, this route is simply dominated by Delta Air Lines. It’s quite amazing to me that Delta captures 83% of the seats available, with United totaling only 12%. Frontier, an Ultra-Low-Cost Carrier with only 4 weekly flights, captures 5% of the weekly seats. So how does United only offer a bit more than double the market share of a 4x weekly ULCC? They should be a much bigger player out of one of their primary hubs, right? Of the flights available on Delta, the lowest price options are all direct or connecting flights through Los Angeles (LAX). For United, the cheapest flights by a significant margin force a connection at either Denver (DEN) or Houston (IAH). So, while United does not offer significant direct options, they are intentionally routing traffic through their mid-continent hub cities.

In my search for a potential vacation, I also wanted to see what days of the week offered the most flights and the lowest prices. For a direct flight, United and Delta flights all ran at $329 for a basic economy fare, while Frontier charged $109 for their no-frills flying. I tallied the seats available for each day of the week, shown below. Delta totaled 10 flights a day, except for 9 on Wednesday and only 7 on Saturday. United offered 2 flights each day, with 1 flight on Saturday. Finally, Frontier offered flights only 4 days a week. The total count below also considers the aircraft type and capacity for each flight.

The last thing I followed in my search was the available aircraft types for this route. Unfortunately, no wide-body aircraft operate on this route, but several narrow-bodies are used on this city-pair. Delta operates a mix of Boeing 737-900ER, 757-200, and 757-300. United uses a mix of Boeing 737-800, Airbus A319, and A320 aircraft. Finally, Frontier is scheduled to fly the Airbus A320 with a high-density configuration of 180 seats. While the mix of narrow-body aircraft isn’t terribly exciting, snagging a flight on a 757-300 would still be something worth noting, as not many are in the air.

In conclusion, it was surprising to me that a more even split between United and Delta did not exist. A split of 83/12/5 for market share clearly shows the advantage that Delta has on this route. It will be interesting to see if United attempts to add capacity on this route moving forward to restore what they have called their natural share of the domestic travel market. Additionally, there are only 4 weekly flights on a ULCC between two of the largest US cities. I wonder if Frontier would increase frequency or if Spirit would jump into this city pair as well.

Frontier A321 N705FR "Ferndale the Pygmy Owl" landing with thrust reverse on runway 01L at TPA (Michael Gutta).

Let me know your thoughts on this blog post and potential future topics involving Atlanta, San Francisco, Delta, United, Frontier or anything aviation related.