I have to go to Houston in a couple weeks for work, so I went ahead and booked my plane ticket tonight. Prices sure have jumped since Southwest left. I used to fly pretty regularly to Orlando, Houston and Chicago for work out of Jackson and it was reasonable. Taking a look at prices now, it's considerably higher to Chicago and Houston. Jackson should have done whatever needed to keep Southwest.
O/T: Flying out of Jackson
- Thread starter ronpolk
- Start date
Back in June, Jackson had the 9th highest airfares in the country. Memphis was 10th. For years Memphis was in the top 5 because of Northwest/Deltas choke hold on the airport. Now that they have dropped hub status and the addition of Southwest and Frontier, fares have gotten better. Frontier is expanding service to Dallas nonstop this fall.
What are you smoking? The direct flight is insanely expensive. It may have been cheaper when Airtran was still operating in HSV, but you only take the direct flight if you absolutely have to now.
I don't know all of the details of what was done over time to keep Southwest, but they've wanted out for years and have been held up for quite some time.
Are fares better? All I know is it's far harder to get to. I'd gladly play NWAs higher prices. I can't even get a direct flight to Memphis any more. Doesn't exist. There seem to be about seven flights a day into MEM. That said, all plane tickets are expensive now
Southwest isn't the regional carrier it used to be. It's one of the major carriers. As they've expanded their major market routes (and now International routes), they've shifted away from the smaller markets. Also, for all the people saying "I've flown Southwest flights for years and every flight was packed," the fact is Southwest's passenger traffic in Jackson had been dropping for years. It simply was no longer a profitable enough market for them.
The company I work for in northeast Mississippi sends people all over the country regularly. We've used Memphis for years, but recently it's become a lot more difficult just to get where we need to go starting from Memphis, and the prices are steadily climbing to boot. In many cases it's now become barely possible to start from Memphis, fly to another hub and make a connecting flight to a smaller city in one day. One weather hiccup and your *** is an airport somewhere overnight.
GTR (Columbus) used to be a good option when Delta flew from there to both Atlanta and Dallas, but they dropped the Dallas flight years ago. If you're heading somewhere west of the Mississippi, adding two more hours of flying time to go to Atlanta then come back is a mental pain if nothing else. We've used Southwest some out of Birmingham, but what I've priced on Southwest out of Memphis has been no better than anything else so far, though admittedly these are all anecdotal examples.
GTR (Columbus) used to be a good option when Delta flew from there to both Atlanta and Dallas, but they dropped the Dallas flight years ago. If you're heading somewhere west of the Mississippi, adding two more hours of flying time to go to Atlanta then come back is a mental pain if nothing else. We've used Southwest some out of Birmingham, but what I've priced on Southwest out of Memphis has been no better than anything else so far, though admittedly these are all anecdotal examples.
I believe the major driver was that they finally got more gates opened up in Texas (maybe Houston and Dallas, but can't remember). Jackson wasn't a desirable market to begin with, and once they had gates in more desirable markets they could move flights to, there wasn't anything Jackson could do to keep them.
I can understand that. No one in their right mind would move to Jackson to try to grow the market... It's just not there. However, I figured there was enough of a market around Jackson (since it's the closest airport to anyone in central/east MS) to at least have some consistent, sustainable business there by virtue of the fact that there are no other options. Meridian, gtr, tupelo, etc. can only run expensive puddle hopper flights to and from Atlanta (and maybe Houston or Dallas).
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Southwest passenger counts had been diminishing for years out of Jackson, mainly on it's bread and butter route to Houston Hobby. However, Southwest could have tried and offered flights to ATL and Dallas Love before making a decision to close up. There was political stench to this as well. Southwest just didn't care about serving Mississippi. Trent Lott is the only reason Jackson service started in '97. Another thing that has been learned is that Jackson travelers prefer legacy carriers to low-cost carriers. That is interesting considering the location, and that legacy carriers typically had higher airfares.
I would love to see Jackson get Frontier but, JAN is now an expensive airport to operate from. I also doubt local travelers would support a non legacy airline like Frontier.
I would love to see Jackson get Frontier but, JAN is now an expensive airport to operate from. I also doubt local travelers would support a non legacy airline like Frontier.