Pelham Aviation by Michael Gutta

Southwest Airlines at Greenville-Spartanburg Intl. Airport November 6, 2019 By: Michael Gutta On November 3, 2019 Southwest Airlines resumed flights from Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP) to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, a service that was previously discontinued on April 12, 2016. The history of Southwest Airlines at GSP has been relatively short and has already seen highs and lows. Southwest service in South Carolina began on March 13, 2011 with flights from both GSP and Charleston International Airport (CHS). Service from GSP began with 7 daily departures to 5 destinations: Baltimore (BWI, 2x), Chicago-Midway (MDW, 2x), Nashville (BNA), Houston-Hobby (HOU), and Orlando (MCO). Southwest introducing service at GSP was a major boon for the airport and Upstate South Carolina region for reducing prices and keeping flyers from driving to Atlanta or Charlotte for lower fares. Southwest B737-700 N931WN in Lone Star One livery a...

ROUTE ANALYSIS: Tampa Bay to Houston April 19, 2019 By: Michael Gutta Following a trip from Tampa Bay to Houston, I decided to explore the USDOT T100 data available for this sector. I considered all commercial flights between St. Pete-Clearwater (PIE) and Tampa (TPA) to both George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) and William P. Hobby (HOU) during the year 2017, the last full year of published data. For this year, there were no scheduled flights from St. Petersburg-Clearwater (PIE) to the Houston airports. The primary carrier at PIE, Allegiant Air, actually has no presence in the Houston market (either HOU or IAH). I also only looked at commercial passenger carriers, so the cargo numbers reported are only for belly cargo, not scheduled cargo carriers. This study was unsurprisingly dominated by the primary carriers at Hobby (Southwest) and George Bush (United), but I wanted to see who seems to be leading on this route, and how much of a contribution the ULCC carrier Spirit has made ...

AIRPORT ANALYSIS: Southwest Airlines at Tampa International February 2, 2019 By: Michael Gutta I recently flew on a personal vacation from Tampa, Florida (TPA) to San Jose, Costa Rica (SJO) for some fishing and time in the sun. Given that there is no direct flight between this city pair, I chose a connection through Fort Lauderdale (FLL) on Southwest Airlines. This provided 4 segments on Southwest Airlines, and my first flight on a Boeing 737 Max aircraft, as well as my first time traveling through the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. As with a previous trip, I decided to look at my carrier’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 as with last time, the 3 areas I wanted to study were: the number of passengers by destination, the load factor by destination, and the aircraft type by departure. In reviewing the available data, I ignored ...