Portland International Jetport | PWM

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CY2024 enplanements were released last week and PWM moved up 3 spots to the 96th busiest airport in the country which also includes its territories. As predicted, Burlington (123) just barely surpassed Manchester (125) to claim the title of New England's 5th largest airport based on passenger counts and they both better watch out for New Haven which grew by 20 percent!
 
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The "big boys" for anyone who may be interested. LAX, MCO, EWR, AUS, and MDW all experienced declines.
 
Portlander said:
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CY2024 enplanements were released last week and PWM moved up 3 spots to the 96th busiest airport in the country which also includes its territories. As predicted, Burlington (123) just barely surpassed Manchester (125) to claim the title of New England's 5th largest airport based on passenger counts and they both better watch out for New Haven which grew by 20 percent!
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Beating Little Rock surprises me, given that the city is larger and I don't believe there's a close alternative.
 
Madison, Greensboro and Wichita are also surprising seeing they are all larger in both city and metro populations. I'd add Harrisburg to the list also even though its city population is smaller (only 11.8 square miles) and happens to be the same distance to PHL as Portland is to BOS.
 
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Portland's eyebrow raise with greater enplanements as compared to somewhat relative cities is no surprise to me. Talk to the people at the car rental counters. They will let you in on the upcoming summer and fall peak times with tourists and summertime residents. They all say it gets kind of crazy. Wichita? I've been there many times, or once every summer growing up. Our family would fly in-and-out to see our grandparents. I remember the smothering hot jetways (lol). There isn't much to do in Wichita during the summer, or at any other time, really. And Manchester's numbers peaked back when they had exclusivity with Southwest flights. I remember flying in and out and it was painfully inconvenient. Portland is a more thriving metropolis than these other places when you factor in all the visitors. They come from all over the country and world.
 
Some load factor data for Breeze from March. Overall solid numbers. CHS is a bit low but not terrible. I had been worried about SRQ as it got off to a slow start with ~40% load factors in January but it looks like it's become another successful addition to the "sunshine shuttle" services

PWM-CHS : 60.1%
PWM-MCO : 88.3%
PWM-RDU : 84.4%
PWM-RSW : 89.3%
PWM-SRQ : 82.7%
PWM-TPA : 89.7%
 
NR2Portland, if you visit the Airliners.net and find the thread for "Rest of New England Aviation 2025" you'll find a snapshot (March) of all of the larger NE airports and their airlines, routes and load factors. Frontier flights from PWM-TPA (22) were embarrassing at 33.18% and PWM-MCO (30) was better at 68.28% but still not great. Would not be surprised if F9 terminates Portland service in the near future. All Breeze routes from PWM were very healthy except for Charleston at 60.02% but that number should improve during the summer and fall.
 
Portlander said:
NR2Portland, if you visit the Airliners.net and find the thread for "Rest of New England Aviation 2025" you'll find a snapshot (March) of all of the larger NE airports and their airlines, routes and load factors. Frontier flights from PWM-TPA (22) were embarrassing at 33.18% and PWM-MCO (30) was better at 68.28% but still not great. Would not be surprised if F9 terminates Portland service in the near future. All Breeze routes from PWM were very healthy except for Charleston at 60.02% but that number should improve during the summer and fall.
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Frontier has no summer routes out of PWM at all this year. They've axed CVG, DEN, ORD, PHL, RDU and RSW. Right now they're only operating a token 1x weekly to MCO until October. I suspect they'll keep MCO until at least spring of 26 but I'd be very surprised if they brought TPA back for the winter.

If F9 does exit PWM, I'd hope that WN would go daily to MCO from February through May.
 
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Frontier's flights out of BTV to MCO and TPA are also suffering with both load factors below 58% which may be the beginning of the end for Burlington also.
 
Any theories as to why Frontier is struggling while Breeze appears to be doing well?
 
Basically their overall image, inconsistent schedules, limited upgrade opportunities, nickel and dime you for every extra and four consecutive years of lost revenue. They are considered a notch up from Spirit in the ultra low cost arena and I would personally put them on par with Allegiant. On the upside, Frontier delivers exactly what their target market expects, great fares on modern Airbus 320/21 aircraft with service to over 120 destinations. They do have nice looking paint schemes on their planes! Inaugural flight into Portland on July 10, 2018 with a departure to RDU with Paul Bradbury (suit) in attendance.


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Here is my take on Frontier aka dartboard airline. They Charge for everything....
They Fly A320 and A321 which both come to PWM
200+ seats on the 321 vs 160 seat range for the A220 B6 and MX, B6 used the A320 (180 seats) to MCO
For the minimal times SWA flew to MCO, all flights were full. Attribute that to free bags, which just ended.
Are families flying breeze due to a family section in the back?
Both BTV and PWM are showing low % which I am wondering who its customers are? Is the loss of the Canadians traveling to Maine and VT flew F9 due to its pricing? now they are not coming?
Allegiant also showed lower % for BGR, which gets a lot of Canadians.
I noticed that the flight times leaving PWM were very late compared to B6 and MX , families don't want to arrive to see the mouse at 1am
Example: F9
10/18-10/25
Premium 228.28 RT
Lv PWM 730pm and get into MCO at 1054pm

They are using off peak times

Breeze
10/18-10/25
Premium 479.00 RT
Lv PWM 1116am arrive MCO 250pm
 
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