MSP Airport

[Ottergoose]

With winds out of the northwest Monday morning, all of those departing freighters should put on quite a show from the new aircraft viewing area on Cargo Road; have been wanting to shoot the DC/MD 10/11's for a while now, the presence of a 744 will be icing on the cake.

On Friday morning, the 744 filed for departure at 8:00 AM and actually left at 8:50 AM; I'm hoping to be there Monday for the whole 8:00, my young kiddos permitting.

Through a series of unusual circumstances (and the fact that Delta does some maintenance on 747's here at MSP) we actually had four of them operate here on Thursday (one of which is still here being worked on), three from Delta, and the freighter on behalf of UPS.

Two thirds of Delta's from that day can be seen here (which is from the new Cargo Road viewing area):

N667US departs MSP; Minneapolis, MN by Nick Benson, on Flickr

[Chauncey87]

Lufthansa A380 landed around 2100. No idea how long it will be parked near the hangers delta parks there 747's. For almost an hour it was parked in front of T2.

[twinkess]

Here is the flight. Looks like a diversion from SFO http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DLH4 ... /KSFO/KMSP

[MSPtoMKE]

I would have seen it if it had come in a little earlier. I flew into Terminal 2 around 6:30. Looks like it departed just before midnight, a pretty long time on the ground for a diversion.

[SteveXC500]

It was apparently a medical diversion. Rumor was a passenger suffered a stroke.

[nfschauer]

Just witnessed a British Airlines 747 land. I tweeted at the airport asking why. I looked it up on my flight radar 24 and it was LHR to Mexico City, so maybe health issues or technical problems?

[SteveXC500]

Smell of smoke in the cockpit. They are requesting a gate and maintenance to check.

[Chauncey87]

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/01/0 ... ng-at-msp/

"An Italian woman is recovering in the Twin Cities Tuesday night after she suffered a stroke during a flight."


I will try to post a couple pics I took of the Lufthansa A380 when it came in. I also have a couple random shots I took of the B747's from Etihad* and Atlas cargo jets.

*the Etihad B747 is operated by Atlas air.

[maxbaby]

Yet another option to/from Chicago-O'Hare. Frontier Airlines will begin year round service on April 15th. This will bring the total to five airlines to serve the MSP/ORD route. The others are American, Delta, Spirit and United.

[mattaudio]

And Southwest to MDW in the market. Sun Country pulled out of the market (again) a few months ago.

[MNdible]

Any guesses why Frontier would want to get involved in that dog fight?

[mattaudio]

I feel like it's more marketing plan than business plan. Ever since Frontier moved away from being a traditional airline with a traditional hub at Denver, they've done whatever they can to make a splash in new markets. Sort of like Spirit, but more chaotic and short-lived. I wonder what percentage of routes they've started in the past 5 years that have been canceled within a year or two. They closed a fledgling Milwaukee hub. They created a focus city at Wilmington, DE calling it Wilmington/Philadelphia. That folded less than a year ago. They also have a focus city in Trenton, NJ - a terminal with two gates (about the size of St. Cloud).

Tying this back to the MSP area, I find it interesting that Spirit and Frontier continue to expand here. Part of their business model is inducing travel demand through $29/39 fares that would otherwise never exist to a Delta or other legacy carrier with higher prices. Not sure how sustainable that is if the price of oil jumps back up to $100/barrel or more. Overall, it seems good for the airport and puts some (but not much) pricing pressure on Delta in leisure markets.

I'm also curious to see if any of these airlines would ever jump to Rochester or St. Cloud (adding a /Minneapolis to the name for their marketing, of course). Allegiant has tried a variety of markets from these two airports, with limited success. They tried Rochester-Las Vegas and Rochester-Phoenix but ended both services. They still serve St. Cloud-Phoenix during the winters, though they pulled out of St. Cloud-Orlando. These two airports seem to be *just* far enough away to not be effective relievers to MSP for some of this demand. Plus, MSP has no airfield capacity constraints and relatively low operational costs charged to airlines. With MSP being so centrally-located and well-connected, they really don't have much of a reason to try and move MSP "induced demand" to alternate airfields.

[SteveXC500]

Just guessing here...Frontier must be assuming they can fill a plane to ORD with passengers that might or would fly Spirit. Then again, they have been chaotic, to mattaudio's point.
Spirit keeps expanding as well, adding PHL and BOS for this Spring/Summer season. To my knowledge, they are bringing back every route they flew last Summer as well, so it is continued growth for them at MSP. Good to see for the overall market even if they are not my airline of choice.

[exiled_antipodean]

Delta reminds us that MSP-NRT relies on connections ex-NRT, by mentioning dropping MSP-NRT if Haneda is opened up.

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/n ... ights.html

[maxbaby]

What about the other cities that serve NRT? Such as Detroit, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles or Atlanta. Will they lose their flights too?

[mattaudio]

Detroit and Seattle are the primary Pacific gateways for Delta. Atlanta has struggled with Pacific flights.

Worst case, if we do lose the Narita flight, I fully expect us to gain a Shanghai flight (joint venture with China Eastern), and/or a Seoul flight if the relationship with Korean Air repairs. And actually I'd expect that one or both of those flights would do better than a flight to Narita with pared-down onward connections. DL has less than half the onward connections from NRT than 5-10 years ago. I've flown HKG-NRT-MSP, and MSP-NRT-PEK. Now, with HKG-NRT and PEK-NRT eliminated (among others), I would have had to use an American gateway such as Detroit or Seattle. But for secondary cities in Asia, a PVG or ICN flight with an Asian partner would prevent double-connects that even the Narita hub can't serve.

[exiled_antipodean]

Really depends which happens first
i) Delta repairs its toasted relationship with Korean
ii) Shanghai makes international-to-international transfers easier (still an immigration check).

[exiled_antipodean]

Decent discussion of the issues here

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forum ... n/6598129/

Japan has never been a big supporter of liberalizing air service agreements, so this could drag on for a while before anything is resolved, or not. Delta could clearly make their route network to Asia work without this flight.

[MSPtoMKE]

American Airlines is beefing up its LAX hub, including launching 2x daily service to MSP. I haven't seen whether they will be mainline or American Eagle flights yet. American previously announced starting MSP-LGA and MSP-DCA this year as well.

[SteveXC500]

That brings AA to 35 departures this summer (searched mid-July). Nice to see, but Concourse E is going to be overflowing now. Maybe one or more of the airlines at E will move to T2 when the additional gates are completed this fall.