Logan Airport Flights and Airlines Discussion

[lexicon506]

I think this is great news. It shows that Boston is improving its connections to the rest of the world and that Boston's economy and worldwide influence are only growing. And we deserve that flight to China

Thursday, October 19, 2006
Logan to get new non-stop service to Brussels and Madrid

Boston travelers could soon have non-stop service to Brussels and Madrid, but previously announced plans for a non-stop flight to China may not happen until 2008, the head of Logan International Airport said today.

Thomas J. Kinton Jr., executive director of the Massachusetts Port
Authority, which runs Logan, told Massport's board that he is "confident that our continuing talks with airlines will result in new service to Brussels and Madrid.''

The last time Boston had non-stop service to Madrid, Kinton said, was in the 1970s on Iberian Airways. Brussels service ended in the 1990s after Belgian carrier Sabena was shut down and liquidated by the Belgian government.

Kinton said Massport is in talks with American Airlines and Delta Air Lines to launch the Brussels service and with Iberian about resuming Madrid.

On the issue of service to China, which Mayor Thomas M. Menino said in January would be up and running by the end of this year, Kinton said Massport is "still in discussions" with Hainan Airways but thinks the service to either Beijing or Shanghai might not happen until 2008 when Hainan receives new fuel-efficient Boeing 787 jets that can make the trip cost effective.

(By Peter J. Howe, Globe staff)

 

[lexicon506]

And while we're at it.....

New Service Announced Between Glasgow and Boston Logan International Airport; New England travelers will enjoy reliable low-cost flights to the UK

August 17, 2006

The Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) announced today that starting in May 2007, Flyglobespan will begin daily service from Glasgow, Scotland to Boston Logan International Airport. Flyglobespan is a successful low-cost carrier based in Scotland, offering service to a wide range of destinations within Europe. Flyglobespan recently began service to Orlando, Florida, its first U.S. destination.

?This new service between Glasgow and Boston is fantastic news for Scotland,? said Scotland?s Transport Minister Tavish Scott. ?It will open up new opportunities for Scottish businesses and bring great benefits for Scottish tourism. Boston is one of the most important and influential cities in America and the announcement today gives us a welcome boost.?

"With Flyglobespan's daily service to Glasgow, virtually all of the United Kingdom is now served from Boston Logan International Airport, said Massport's CEO and Executive Director Thomas J. Kinton, Jr. "Massport targeted Glasgow as a primary European destination and with Flyglobespan, New England travelers will now have the added bonus of a reliable low-cost carrier offering flights to the UK."

Mary McLaughlin, Director of Transport at Scottish Enterprise, said: "Scotland's business and economic links with Boston and its strong life sciences and financial communities in particular are well established. Scottish Development International's (SDI) U.S. operations are based in Boston and SDI also provides a business incubator facility there for Scottish businesses. This latest direct service to Boston is therefore enormously valuable and an important addition to the direct services between Scotland and the United States."

Boston Logan International Airport is the gateway to New England, offering nonstop service to 76 domestic and 33 international destinations. In 2005, Logan handled more than 27 million passengers. As the airport completes its $4.4 billion modernization program; new terminals, parking facilities, roadways and airport concessions have transformed Boston Logan into a world-class facility capable of meeting the needs of local travelers and businesses for years to come.

Massport.com

 

[atlantaden]

It seems that MassPort only wants international flights to arrive in the newly renovated Terminal E. According to the talk down here in Atlanta, Delta Airlines, now that they had a spiffy new Terminal A at Logan, wanted to begin international flights out of Logan but using their new terminal A for both arrivals and departures using a section of the terminal for US customs. This makes sense in terms of ease of connecting flights on Delta without changing terminals but MassPort said NO...all international arrivals must use Terminal E. Delta now uses Kennedy and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta for the majority of their international service which is certainly a loss for Logan.

 

[Ron Newman]

isn't Terminal E the only one with customs facilities?

 

[Waldorf]

No, the new Terminal A has customs facilities as well.

 

[tocoto]

It seems that MassPort only wants international flights to arrive in the newly renovated Terminal E. According to the talk down here in Atlanta, Delta Airlines, now that they had a spiffy new Terminal A at Logan, wanted to begin international flights out of Logan but using their new terminal A for both arrivals and departures using a section of the terminal for US customs. This makes sense in terms of ease of connecting flights on Delta without changing terminals but MassPort said NO...all international arrivals must use Terminal E. Delta now uses Kennedy and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta for the majority of their international service which is certainly a loss for Logan.

Delta flies Intl. flights from terminal A at Logan. Look at the Logan website and you willl see which terminal Delta flights use, and they ALL use terminal A.

BTW Delta refused to pay its debt agreement on terminal A earlier this year because of poor financial performance. I don't know if or how it was resolved but I do know they are not using the full capacity of the terminal and are preventing Massport from opening slots for other airlines while not paying their bills. Still Delta is flying out of terminal A for both domestic and international flights. IMO Massport and the taxpayers have bent over backwards for Delta.

 

[atlantaden]

Delta, at this time, does not fly international from Logan. What you might be referring to are it's partners (Alitalia being one) where Delta passengers are flown into Boston then transferred to the partner's flight. It's confusing when you see the Arrivals/Departures on the MassPort web site...they even have Iberia flights listed when Iberia does not even fly from Logan. I did hear also, that Northwest might be leaving Terminal E for Terminal A.

 

[ChunkyMonkey]

Actually Delta does fly internationally from Terminal A: Cancun, Bermuda and Fredericton comes to mind. However, all of the international flights pre clear customs at their respective countries so Delta can simply forgo Terminal E, which is the only immigration/customs facility at Logan.

I believe Terminal A was originally going to get a customs facilities but the feds nixed the idea. Terminal B also was going to get a FIS station but due to the slowdown, AA postponed the expansion.

The original article is a little pointless, as it states that Logan "could" get service to Madrid and Brussels. I'm hoping this will come to pass, but so many destinations have been announced and but never flown.

 

[Roxxma]

I went through the new customs facilities on Turesday upon return from Germany, they are about twice the size that they were the last time I passed through them. There were two flights arriving at the time I was there (a very full Lufthansa 747-400, on which I arrived and an American Arlines 777 from London). Immigration and Customs took all of about 15 minutes to clear. It is a well planned facility.

 

[kmp1284]

From what I was told(by a friend of the family high up at Delta), the original plans for Term. A was to have full Immigration and Customs as in Term E. Alitalia, Air France and AeroMexico were to move in there, thus freeing up space in E and also allowing Delta passengers to connect more easily from their own flights to those of their alliance. There was also talk of Delta launching flights to Paris, Frankfurt, Rome, Manchester, Shannon, Dublin, a second daily to London and substantially more domestic flying to places like San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Chicago, Dallas again and other major cities where Delta had a relatively small market share but a good place to draw premium international travelers. This all certainly would have filled up that terminal by now but the economic factors failed at the worst possible time and we end up with a half full terminal and the premier international destinations being Bermuda and Cancun rather than London and Rome.

 

[atlantaden]

From what I was told(by a friend of the family high up at Delta), the original plans for Term. A was to have full Immigration and Customs as in Term E. Alitalia, Air France and AeroMexico were to move in there, thus freeing up space in E and also allowing Delta passengers to connect more easily from their own flights to those of their alliance. There was also talk of Delta launching flights to Paris, Frankfurt, Rome, Manchester, Shannon, Dublin, a second daily to London and substantially more domestic flying to places like San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Chicago, Dallas again and other major cities where Delta had a relatively small market share but a good place to draw premium international travelers


All of the above is true and made a great deal of sense for Delta. However, I recently talked to one of the Atlanta-based construction managers of Delta Terminal A (he commuted between Atl and Bos for a few years)and he was emphatic that Delta wanted customs and immigration facilities built into the new terminal but MassPort nixed the plan. According to this guy, all the top brass from Delta, including the then CEO Leo Mullins, flew up to Boston to negotiate with MassPort officials but they wouldn't budge. MassPort insisted, and still insists, that all international flights arrive through Terminal E. Any plans for Delta to fly international routes out of their new terminal were dropped. Soon thereafter Delta announced new international routes to Europe from JFK and Atlanta. Seriously, it had little to do with economic reasons. It was MassPort! Delta, even with all it's financial problems, expanded it's international routes considerably since these routes are so profitable and all these new routes went to JFK and Atlanta at the expense of Logan. MassPort, for all their talk about obtaining new international routes, blew it!

 

[kmp1284]

I was aware MassPort had played somewhat of a role in this problem, but I had not realized they were so emphatically against I&C in A. It's really crappy as someone who does a lot of international traveling on Delta to connect backwards or out of the way any time I go to London or wherever else. They could have made a killing in this market. From everything I have heard this is the second or third most profitable US city for British, first for Swiss, second for Alitalia and Aer Lingus and is quite high for Air France and Lufthansa. American's two flights to Heathrow also do quite well considering these flights have almost no connecting opportunities to places other than American hubs.

There was talk, though to a lesser degree of putting customs in B at a combined facility where the two piers end as at the time American already had three flights to Europe(2 London, Paris) and was talking about Madrid, Brussels, Manchester and Shannon on 757's and had started taking reservations for Tokyo on the 777. If I recall correctly US had a daily to Frankfurt and the plans for two or three more to the big markets, probably London, Paris and Amsterdam.

 

[ChunkyMonkey]

I really don't think Massport would nix Terminal A immigration. It doesn't make sense, since Delta was paying for the building. However, I'm quite sure that the feds nixed the idea as it will require manpower that they don't have to man an additional terminal for a few minimal international flights. Early architectural plans show a FIS facility, which would not have be shown if Massport was against it. I think the Feds eventually nixed the idea.

I also read somewhere that the feds killed the late night TACA flight as they didn't want their pay the custom agents to be there when the flight arrived later around 2am since that is the only flight coming in at that time.

 

[atlantaden]

Massport spent a few hundred million (including several new restaurants and retail facilities) renovating Terminal E as the international arrival's gateway into Logan. It would make sense for them, after having invested so much money into that terminal and signing up so many new retailers, to keep it as full up with foot traffic as possible. Like I said, the guy I talked to was one of the construction managers of Terminal A and he was insistent that Delta wanted customs/immigration facilities in that terminal. JFK has customs/immigration facilities in many different terminals so for the Feds to argue that they didn't want to hire additional manpower or spread their people into other terminals isn't a valid argument. If that were the case, you better believe that the local congressional delegation, along with the Romney administration would have raised a huge fuss. However, I do think that if Delta really wanted international flights out of Logan, they'd do it. The walkway connecting E to A is very cool and most arriving international passengers (if they didn't have just minutes to make a connection) would be in for a very pleasant walk to A to get on their connecting flight. It's too bad that MassPort didn't connect all the terminals with those walkways.

 

[ChunkyMonkey]

I guess we will never know. I understand that foot traffic is important for Terminal E, but if Delta wants to add more international destinations, Massport will surely benefit from increasing taxes, landing fees etc, which will certainly outweigh foot traffic as that will be additional flights, not taking away flights from Terminal E.

Anyway back on topic. I'm glad to see that Alaska Airlines have announced new service to Portland Oregon, the first non stop between Boston and Portland for many years. Now if we can only get New Orleans back, we will have nonstops to a majority of the major metros in the U.S.

 

[kmp1284]

There is no money to be made in New Orleans. This is a far nicer development than MSY could ever be:

http://www.europapress.com/noticiame...dos.aspx?cod=20070112123931&ch=272

For those not speaking spanish, the gist is that Iberia is launching two new destinations from Madrid; Boston and Dulles, one in May 2007 and one in 08, I imagine both would be daily, year round on an Airbus A340. Most expectations are that Boston will be first as the previous attempts at the DC market by United have been losers and most consider Boston to be more seriously under-served across that Atlantic, especially to Madrid, Lisbon, Brussels, Tel Aviv and Warsaw.

 

[ChunkyMonkey]

Madrid would be awesome! I hope that article is accurate. I'm still waiting for the nonstop to China that the Globe mentioned about a year back. Doesn't seem to be happening.

Boston is definitely due for a nonstop to Asia, hopefully JAL or ANA to NRT.

 

[stellarfun]

Iberia once flew between Boston and Spain. In December 1973, an Iberia DC-10 landed short, took out the approach pier lights, bounced over an embankment, and skidded down the runway, sans landing gear, No fatalities.

Landing was attempted on 33L, in low visibility with wind sheer.

I suspect the service is likely to be seasonal, unless they are anticipating a lot of freight in the belly.

 

[Roxxma]

I seem to recall Iberia having service to Boston in the mid 90s, along with TAP, SABENA (which I flew from Boston to Brussels in 1995 and is now defunct), Olympic and El Al. Did Finnair or SAS ever serve Boston?

 

[kmp1284]

Iberia hasn't been in Boston since shortly after the 1973 incident, that may actually have been their final flight into Boston. TAP was another one that served Boston in the 70's. I think El Al was a little later. Sabena was here at least twenty years. The Brussels flight is definitely the biggest gaping hole in the Boston trans-Atlantic market and there seems like no likely suitor either unfortunately. I would bet on Shanghai and Tokyo coming before at this point. Olympic left a few years ago, this would be a winner if they had smaller planes such as the A330-200 rather than the 340-300. FinnAir currently serves Boston in the summer, last year was twice a week, this week will be three times. SAS would probably look into serving Boston if they could find a way to make a profit in NY. I have heard that Boston is on the second tier of cities for Emirates after Houston and Chicago with DC and San Francisco. From what I have seen on the schedules we are getting quite a bit of capacity increase, here is what I have seen so far:

British: 3 Daily to LHR, 1 B777-200 for the am, then 2 B747's in the evening(same as last summer)

Virgin: 1 Daily to LHR, B747-400(last summer was Airbus A340-300 mainly)

Air France: 2 Daily to CDG, 1 A340-300, 1 B747-400(last summer was 2 A340-300)

Lufthansa: 2 Daily to Frankfurt, 1 A340-300, 1 A340-600(last summer was 2 A340-300), 1 Daily to Munich, A340-300(same as last summer)

Swiss: 1 Daily to Zurich, A330-200 on 5 days, A340-300 on other 2(last summer was A330-200 every day)

Aer Lingus: 1 Daily to Shannon, A330-300, 1 Daily to Dublin A330-200(last summer was same planes, both to Shannon then on to Dublin)

Alitalia: 1 Daily to Milan, B767-300, 1 Daily to Rome, B767-300(last summer, Milan was daily, Rome was 5 weekly)

Northwest: 2 Daily to Amsterdam, 1 A330-300, 1 B757-200(last summer was A330-300)

FinnAir: Aforementioned 3 weekly B757-200 to Helsinki via Stockholm

SATA: not sure

TACV: not sure

American: 2 Daily to London both B777-200, Paris 1 daily 767-300, Manchester 1 daily 757, Shannon got the ax

US and Delta have a daily to Bermuda

Iberia: if it starts would be daily A340-300 to Madrid, which would probably be year-round


not sure of others at this point