As chair of the Air Service Development Task Force, I am very pleased to report that we are working hand in hand with the City to make additional nonstop destinations, new carriers, and more service a reality.
This week marks an important milestone in our efforts. City staff is bringing forward a new air service incentive program to Council on Thursday. The innovative program is the City’s most aggressive to date. It includes the waiver of landing fees, terminal rents, and airfield fees, as well as up to $300,000 in marketing support. We fully support this program. Having an aggressive incentive program is necessary, however, it is only one component of our larger strategy to improve air service.
Increasing nonstop flights into and out of San Antonio is complicated. In order to add nonstop flights, we need to demonstrate to an airline that San Antonio is the strongest market for them to add service. Doing that requires a strong business case, one showing that the flight will regularly be full. This is difficult. And, it is more difficult because of the proximity of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and the number of San Antonio area residents traveling north to fly. Airlines know this, and they provide service accordingly.
The City and Task Force’s top priority is attracting nonstop service to Boston. The Boston area is our largest region without nonstop service and has key industry connections with San Antonio. If an airline ran the business case for nonstop service between San Antonio and Boston, it would come up short. That’s the bad news. The good news is we know current travel does not portray the entirety of the market. A 2013 study indicates that 21,000 San Antonio area travelers a year fly out of another airport to Boston, the majority flying out of Austin-Bergstrom. That’s 58 trips a day. If a significant portion of that traffic chose San Antonio, our business case would be stronger. Add to that increased travel with a nonstop flight and the airport’s new incentive program. Now, our business case is much stronger.
It would be easy to explain the status quo; it is much more difficult to take action to improve our air service. But, we know that is not good enough for our community. That is why we are partnering with the City and asking you to choose San Antonio.
We are all working to make choosing San Antonio easier. The Consolidated Rental Car Facility currently under construction, while inconvenient now, will do that once complete. So will the planned connection of the two terminals to provide more dining and shopping opportunities. The additional resources provided to the Aviation Department by City Manager Sheryl Sculley are also efforts to improve the airport. The City is taking action to address the challenge at hand. It is time for us, the community and the business community, to join as full partners. It is time for us to choose San Antonio. Demonstrate to airlines with your ticket purchases that San Antonio is ready for additional air service.
Yes, we have had recent wins in air service. Last year, Miami and New Orleans were added as nonstop destinations and additional service was added to Los Angeles and Cancun. And just last week, Allegiant had its inaugural flights to Las Vegas, Orlando-Sanford, and Ft. Lauderdale. New destinations, more service, and new carriers translate to more competition and lower fares. These are steps in the right direction. But, it is not enough. We need to do more, and we need your support.
We’ve heard from the community and know from experience that improving air service needs to be a top priority. Now, it is time for the community to come together and act. Take ownership of this challenge and partner with us to bolster our efforts. You can help by filling out our survey here. You can help by making San Antonio your airport of choice.
Choose San Antonio. Let’s work together to show our airline partners that San Antonio wants, needs, and can support new nonstop destinations and expanded air service.
*Top image: A Southwest Airlines plane unloads passengers at San Antonio International Airport. Photo by Scott Ball.
Related Stories:
San Antonio Airport Working Group Aims to Improve Service
SAT Announces Two New Nonstop Flights
Is Nonstop Service to Boston Next for SAT?
Officials Celebrate Construction of new Airport Parking, Rental Car Facility
I fly in and out of SAT 6-8 times per year, always for business, and it’s almost always frustrating.
Maybe it’s a chicken and egg thing, but until it becomes more competitive, travelers who have a choice will choose elsewhere because SAT is expensive and inconvenient. SAT ranked 71st in affordability at $434 average; Austin-Bergstrom 16th @ $293.
The parking area has been built, and re-built, and re-re-built since at least 1998. Where’s the long-term planning? As a point of reference, telling travelers it’s “Coming soon” when it won’t be done until 2017 really stretches the definition of “soon.”
If you want travelers to choose SAT, don’t spend $300,000 asking me to buy a ticket from a more expensive airport – spend that money to provide me value added. Why aren’t there more charging ports for mobile devices? What’s the status of free-WiFi (Time Warner and AT&T hotspots throughout the airport, maybe?) Why is flight information so hard to find at SAT?
If SAT is a quick, clean, pleasant travel experience, then maybe travelers will select it over the cheaper alternatives.
You’re also waiving fees for the airlines – thereby reducing revenues for the City and increasing profit for the airlines – but the revenues for maintenance and investment have to come from somewhere, so I guess they come from travelers? Optimistically by increasing passenger volume, I presume? Or by increasing fees for travelers, e.g. increased taxes and fees for renting a car to pay for the new facility. Locality fees and surcharges for renting a car while travelling already cost more when renting a car than the car itself. “WooHoo! Direct flight to SAT! Ouch, $10 per day “convenience fee” for the rental car facility that’s not built yet!”
I don’t understand what you’re asking people to do: choose to buy the more expensive ticket from SAT-BOS in lieu of the cheaper ticket from AUS-BOS, for the purpose of bolstering your business case that people will fly from SAT-BOS? Is that the plan?
Since airlines care about profit, they’ll put flights where the money is, not where the passengers are: why schedule direct SAT-BOS at lower prices if they’re selling out planes SAT-DFW-BOS at higher prices now?
Finally, your survey indicates the tone-deafness of this effort. If a traveler is not on board with the SAT-BOS push, you don’t want to hear from them. You’ll get back to them later.
P.S. I love that “Frequent Parking Program” Guaranteed parking, at a low low introductory rate of only $335 /month. Since I can’t make a business case for paying $10/day parking every day of the month whether I use it or not, I guess I’ll just schlep from the far lots when I travel since there are fewer garage spots available now. I’m sure it’s convenient for someone though. Maybe an airport or airline employee, or someone on the ASDTF?
Thank you for the work that you do to improve SAT’s air service. I fly into SAT (or Austin) weekly, and there is one easy, immediate thing you could do this week to help me choose SAT – the arrivals curbside is a deplorable mess, and it frequently takes my partner 15-20 minutes to drive through the line of cars (longer than it takes to drive home) in the late evenings. Everyone can see this is due to the garage walkway being badly positioned, and the police officers struggling to make the best of it – the immediate area around the walkway is clogged with cars, while 75% of the arrivals curbside, extending to Terminal B, is barely used. Taxis entering traffic at the walkway make it still worse. Hiring a consultant to fix this horrible traffic flow would be an immediate, simple improvement. While the walkway cannot be moved, I would suggest moving the taxi rank to the end of terminal B, and asking the police officers to direct traffic such that there is ~1 minute of traffic flow, followed by pedestrians, then ~1 minute of traffic flow, rather than stopping traffic every time a pedestrian crosses. In the longer term, I beg you to either create a sky bridge or a tunnel from the terminal to the new CONRAC. This terrible arrivals situation creates a bad impression for visitors and a recurring headache for residents. I can tell you that I have never experienced a wait remotely like this in Austin.
+1. The roadway approach to the terminals is TERRIBLE! The vague signage causes people to veer all over the place, and then everything is funneled down to one lane right before the arrivals area. It is a chaotic, unpleasant experience that could be readily fixed by someone who knows what they are doing.
Others have mentioned improvements that could be made throughout the terminals. (Let’s face it, Terminal 2 has a very poor restaurant selection compared to Terminal 1.)
Bottom line: Don’t forget the details. Incremental improvements to make SAT better for travelers will make it a more favorable place to fly in and out of.
Why can’t the walkway be moved? Why does there need to be a crosswalk? This is a multi-year, multi-million dollar project.
Could the planners not have considered this and added in a temporary bridge? Or phased out the demolition of the old bridge. No, it wouldn’t be ADA accessible, but it wouldn’t block traffic, wouldn’t require police, could extend the covered space for pedestrians. They could add an-ADA compliant button-activated signal for a crosswalk, with a low duty-cycle to minimize traffic stoppage, if deemed necessary.
Yes, it would add to the cost, but what does a 24/7 police presence add? 3-5 full-time equivalent officers (168 man hours/week, including Sundays)? That can’t be cheap.
I don’t recall, is the old bridge still there? Can’t they build a temporary flight of stairs? We are talking 18+ months here, not a few weekends of inconvenience.
Thank you. This is a good first step.
I am a frequent flier (over 400,000 points from flying, not from credit card usage), and I see so many problems that affect the airport:
1: Signage has been a major problem at SAT. Some improvement has been made recently, but here are some examples of lacking of reasoning/planning that still exist: Driving up to the terminals, it isn’t evident which lanes lead to the terminal vs. the parking garage and which then lead to the upper level vs. the lower level until you are almost directly under them. Inside the terminal, there are directional signs leading out of the doors that have no crosswalk for shuttles which are all in the outer lane. Signs use the generic term for ground transportation as if it is all lumped together in one place rather than having signs for taxis out the doors where the taxi ranks are, signs for hotel shuttles out the doors with crosswalks that go directly to those, signs for rental car shuttles out the doors that have crosswalks that lead to those, signs out the only door with a crosswalk to the outer parking lot shuttles, signs out the only door that has a crosswalk directly to the local bus (VIA) service, etc. With HOT or cold weather weather at least 8 months of the year why is the airport directing them out ANY door to search for what they really want rather than directing them out the BEST door?
2. San Antonio suffers from a lack of potential passengers in general, not just because of passengers heading to Austin. We are a poor city, and the population to the south of us is sparse, whereas Austin has an increasing number of residents earning higher incomes (which translates to more people flying) and lots of population to the east, west, and north of it which feed into its airport. San Antonio really needs to think about how to promote growth of higher paying industries if they want to grow airport traffic. All these thousands of jobs at call centers which are nice to have, do not pay enough for employees to be able to afford to fly. In 2010, SAT had 3,916,320 enplanements (passengers departing on flights, so not including passengers arriving which would approximately double the number for total passengers), whereas AUS had 4,201,136 enplanements. By 2014, SAT had grown only to only 4,046,856 enplanements (increase of 130,536), whereas Austin had grown to 5,219,982 enplanements (increase of 1,018,846–almost 10 times the number of added passengers from SAT). SAT would have DECREASED in enplanements if it hadn’t added all the new flights to Mexico (which Austin residents often drive here to take). And the increase in Austin traffic has to mostly be related to its increase in employment in higher-earning positions which not only pay salaries that allow personal travel by plane but often involve positions that include business travel. Austin is NOT growing in enplanements that much (an increase of 888,310 more than San Antonio’s increase over a period of only 4 years) because of the San Antonio people who choose AUS over SAT.
3. SAT, has overlooked a market that could be a great fit for increasing its traffic in non-traditional air service due to the attractiveness of our city and region as a tourism destination. Europeans get about 5 weeks of vacation a year. Charter airline businesses are very popular and take European passengers from all major airports there to vacation spots around the globe. This industry has consolidated over the years so that there are now a few big players making it easier to negotiate with them. Each company puts out two catalogs a year (winter and summer) of travel opportunities from airports throughout the continent. Europeans go through the catalogs to shop for vacations like Americans used to go through the Sears catalogs to shop for Christmas. They package 1-week, 2-week, and 3-week air/hotel combination packages while also allowing the purchase of airfare only for those who what to travel independently. These flights are available for booking not only by Europeans going to the exotic locations, but also by people living in the exotic destinations who wish to fly to Europe. The flights are usually only once a week, but they increase to 2 or 3 times a week if a destination becomes popular enough. If the city negotiated with these companies, they might be able to book a flight a week coming from such places as Copenhagen, London, Paris, Vienna, Helsinki, etc. But Europeans don’t tend to be explorers on their vacations; they prefer to go to a location and relax, drink, party, and enjoy warm weather. They would love the River Walk and our sunny weather. But if the city approached them about creating a new destination, I would suggest that they begin not with just San Antonio as a choice but with flights to San Antonio that included a split stay in Corpus Christi (on Padre Island), in Bandera (on a dude ranch) or Austin (emphasizing the music venues/6th Street)–3 days in one and 4 days in the other. (The travel company would charter buses for the side trips. Europeans would probably prefer more days at the beach than in San Antonio, fewer days on the dude ranch than in San Antonio, and possibly more days in Austin than in San Antonio due to all the international publicity that Austin gets these days. Anyway, SAT is perfectly located and San Antonio a great central destination for such package tours that branch off. An Internet search will lead the city to the possible companies to contact, but the largest company providing such trips from cities all over Europe is TUI Group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TUI_Group).
Austins ‘s airport is only marginally better than San Antonio’s and no way is Austin more internationally known than S.A. San Antonio is a military hub for the U.S. Which makes it more recognized around the world. Austin has SXSW but people think of the festival itself mostly and not the location and if anything Texas before Austin. The Spurs generate more buzz worldwide than an annual festival. A friend of mine that moved to Phoenix then S.A. from Manilla Said he was familiar with the Spurs and the River walk but nothing about Austin.
Anyway great read I hope S.A. Figures out what to do with are flourishing city that is in need of better air service. How about a new airport near 281 @46 and which is close to S.A. Suburbs and the cities of San Marcos, New Braunfels, Borene, Fredericksburg and the central Texas population base. I would prefer this over a Southside location.
Yes!!! We need these measures to improve our airport.
Why do we think subsidizing flights will work? It flat out is not sustainable. We don’t have flights because there is not demand. Airlines will go where they can make money. Let’s attack the root cause. We need to make San Antonio a better place to do business. We need to make it an attractive tourist destination beyond the weekend driving traveler or the one off conventioneer. There are no shortcuts to this stuff. But, diverting money to try to treat a symptom of the problem will not work over time.
Because Austin did it first.
http://austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/images/Airport/business/air_service.pdf
Race to the bottom? Who can offer a commercial enterprise the most taxpayer subsidies?
I would be willing to bet these subsidies played a small/no role in their airport success. They did the hard work of building a modern economy and an urban core attractive to residents and tourists.
These subsidies are great for current tourist operators (like Marriott) just like running ads are. The problem is they are quick hit short term gains. We need to get to the hard work of building an economy and tourist industry that builds on itself by being super compelling on its face not through discounts and tricks.
I agree with Lew. San Antonio is not a great place to do business. I was trying to get new customers from around the country who then contacted local reps. The local reps would not provide the service, go out of their way to build a new clientele, and had a negative attitude all the way around. It was a matter of wanting to do the same old thing with the same old people and not looking at new opportunities. Not a way to build new clientele, and certainly not for clientele that would want to fly into town. New ideas and new people get driven away.
I use both SAT and AUS about once a week, depending on which has the least expensive fare to where I am going on American or Southwest. Many times, it’s in one and out the other. SAT is not always the most expensive, but usually is, although the schedules for me are better at SAT so I go with that more.
SAT has a TERRIBLE waiting area for the car rental buses with NO COVER FROM SUN OR RAIN. And like DANSK TEX said, the power outlet situation is also TERRIBLE. Both airports lack restaurants and could use some guidance from, say, Philadelphia or even Love in Dallas.
How did Austin beat us to Frankfurt? One would think with all the military this would be a no brainer. How did that happen? This was probably the best chance at a European flight for San Antonio.
“How Do We Improve San Antonio’s Air Service?”
By making a flight from SAT to SFO cheaper than driving to Austin and flying from AUS to SFO, for starters.
Condor is a charter airline service much like the charter travel companies that I mentioned in my post earlier except that it provides flights only–not combination flight/hotel bookings. It will fly to Austin only ONCE A WEEK. It was probably established by a combination of demand from young people in Europe wanting to come to Austin for holidays of drinking and enjoying live music and promotion of such of a route from representatives of the Austin airport. Condor was also the first European airline to establish service at Houston Intercontinental decades ago; I know, because I flew them when there was nothing else non-stop from Houston to Europe. However, this may be a clue that Austin is already contacting charter companies to provide service for Europeans to “holiday” (their term for take a vacation) in South Texas. If so, SAT should contact TUI and other charter companies quickly. If they don’t, they are too shortsighted in what they can see as the future of SAT.
It’s exciting to be in a place where people are so passionate about air travel. I moved my business here from Florida earlier this year. Basically we crunch millions of data points each day looking for fare anomalies and unusually low fares. I’ve been interviewed about airline pricing in most of the country’s major papers at one time or another and spend my spare time reading rather dry academic papers about airline pricing. For what it’s worth, I also co-lead the world’s largest travel hacking meetup right here in San Antonio.
“How Do We Improve San Antonio’s Air Service?” is the name of this piece but it’s not actually a question. The top priority has already been decided: it’s non-stop service to Boston. I think we really need to dig deeper and discuss why that’s important. The fact that the airport is asking people to fill out surveys about their travel habits now, long after they’ve set their priorities, is troubling and likely setting us down the wrong path.
Working in the leisure and budget travel space as I do, the largest issue in my book remains affordability. 72% of vacationers say that the price of their flight is a primary factor in deciding where they will travel. A non-stop flight to Boston will spend airport capacity and city funds on a route that, at best, will be picked up by a single carrier and run between $350 and $450 dollars. Boston is already an expensive market and when the city stops paying for empty seats, the route will close and we’ll have spent several million dollars with no noticeable improvement.
If we want to solve the affordability issue the game plan is different. It may seem counter-intuitive but the reason pricing is so terrible out of SAT has to do with the predominance of low cost carriers. Several studies have shown that when an airline like Southwest dominates an airport, legacy carriers back out, driving up prices. The fact that Allegiant is adding routes is a huge red flag as their business model relies on operating in and out of airports nobody else wants.
If we care about affordability, we need to work to convince American, United, and Delta to add more capacity into their hubs. Yes, I hate connecting in Dallas and Houston as much as the next guy but we can’t undo the fact that we’re super-hub adjacent. We need to leverage these hubs by connecting to them more efficiently. Encouraging the legacy carriers to move from smaller planes like the MD-80 to 737’s and A320’s would have exactly the impact that’s needed to adjust affordability in the right direction without the huge subsidies that will be necessary to attract a route that, as far as I can tell, not that many people outside of City Hall are actually clamoring for.
This airport is set up to support tourism not local businesses. SA will never attract big businesses until that changes
Great step in the right direction. Love this
The comments section seems to be more insightful and forward- thinking than the actual article!
We are flying to rio next year for the Olympics and will be flying out of AUS (unfortunately!) because we saved ~$500.
The when arrive to the San Antonio airport it is small and clean till you get a in taxi with body order, unprofessional dressed drivers who don’t know where they’re going and follow and stare at their gps which scares the crap out of you. Then you think the rest of San Antonio must be creepy like this.
It is time to be looking at a regional airport between San Antonio and Austin. Located correctly, the distance to either city would be short. Both cities could reclaim land from the existing airports for development. neighbors would not have the noise issues, airlines could realize savings and opportunities from consolidation and businesses would prosper from the growth. Land should be reasonably cheap and we have a new high speed road out there. As much as the new parking garage makes short term sense, it is not going to bring more flights to San Antonio. We are on the verge of becoming the 5th largest city in the country – time to think that. I for one would volunteer to help make a regional a reality.