NEW ROUTE DEVELOPMENT
At the heart of air service development is the recruitment of new service. Frankly, we’re pretty good at it. Even the difficult cases don’t scare us. We’ve built our careers on working with airlines to add service in communities’ others said couldn’t be done. We work to analyze every possible detail that could make – or break – a case for a new route.
We look at passenger data, fare data, revenue data, but everyone does that. However, we also delve deeply into the underlying economic conditions in our airport markets. It’s not just about a gross metropolitan product or the population. It’s about understanding which companies do business in the region, where they travel, and, most importantly, why. It’s about bringing divergent interests to the table in support of a common air service goal. It’s about understanding a city or town the way we would understand our hometown. Airlines continually complement our team on the thoroughness of our research, the detail in our business cases, and the clarity of our concepts. We’re proud to be welcomed into conference rooms at airline headquarters on an almost weekly basis.
STRATEGIC AIR SERVICE PLANNING
An airport can work to recruit new service, but without a strategic plan, it could be left without service to its most important destination. At Volaire, we base everything we do on detailed research and analysis. We believe in taking the time to develop a narrow focus before starting the air service development process. Our strategic plans for air service lay out the underlying market data, often alongside a drive diversion/leakage analysis, allowing an airport to focus on the recruitment of the two or three truly supportable new routes. By working on business cases before meeting with airlines, we ensure we have the best possible degree of detail to support our airline planners.
DRIVE DIVERSION / LEAKAGE ANALYSIS
One of the most important factors in evaluating the ability of a community to support expanded air service is to understand how people in a region use the air service that’s available. No airport retains all of the passengers that travel to and from its core market area. The single most important piece of data an airport can understand is what share of passengers traveling to and from the immediate region use its services and what share drive to competing airports. Our drive diversion or passenger “leakage” studies statistically analyze passenger data, determining just how many core market passengers use their local airport, and how many drive to other airports. The overall market size is critical in making the case that a region can support more service. From this data, we are able to figure out why passengers drive to other airports. It could be lower fares or non-stop flight options. We pinpoint the reason, helping our clients retain passengers and grow service.
AIRLINE PRICING STRUCTURE ANALYSIS
It can often be difficult to understand how and why an airline prices a market a certain way. Our pricing analyses compare a specific market against it peers – looking at filed fares against those at nearby airports. We are able to investigate the reasons behind pricing anomalies, explaining to a community in layman’s terms, why fares are what they are. In some cases, we can find anomalies and effect change in how an airline prices a market.
AIRLINE SCHEDULE ANALYSIS
One of the most overlooked keys to the success of a flight is its schedule. With former airline planners as part of our team, we understand this better than most. Our suite of data allows us to pull specific schedules for any airport in the world for any day of the year. We can check an airport’s departing and arriving flights against a hub schedule at any hub, anywhere. We can quickly determine which markets have solid connections and which do not.
In cases where markets with significant demand don’t have adequate schedules, we can offer schedule adjustments to the carrier, illustrating lost revenue and passengers coupled with the opportunity to recapture both.
AIRPORT COST ANALYSIS
Airlines are extremely risk averse. Part of their risk aversion is evident in how hard they work to reduce their cost of serving airports. In some cases, airlines will switch airports within a region solely based on their cost of operation. Because of this, every airport should have a strong handle on its own airline costs and the costs of its peers. We are able to analyze an airline’s airport costs on both a per enplanement and per departure basis. This allows us to compare peers on an apples-to-apples basis. offering recommendations on how to better structure airline agreements to leverage cost savings for more air service.