A Good Move at PIT

It is widely reported this week that Pittsburgh International Airport – PIT in the language of airline personnel and frequent fliers – experienced a 1.5% monthly increase in passenger traffic compared to the same month a year ago.  More importantly, this is the fifth straight month of passenger increases.  Travel media names from Ben Mutzabaugh in the “USA Today” to Michael Boyd the oft quoted airline analyst are calling the bottom for PIT’s traffic declines and we can look forward to gradual growth for our once impregnable fortress hub now turned into an O&D, origination and destination, airport which means we must rely on growth in the local economy and its flying public.

I’ve often wondered why Pittsburgh, with a regional population over 2.5 million, generates relatively little airline traffic when metro areas half its size generate much more.  One example is Austin, TX with a metro area population slightly more than 1.5 million.  Yet their airport, which is not a hub for any airline, last month reached a monthly level of one million passengers.  PIT’s most recent month is reported at 657,000.  Can the difference be in tourist levels?  That has a bit to do with it considering Austin’s signature events such as SXSW and its ACL Music Festivals.  But I doubt that explains 50% higher numbers.

My theory on this is related to what I consider the best news out of this week’s announcements for PIT: Sun Air Express will be using PIT as a regional hub for service to small-market airports in Pennsylvania.  I believe a big part of the high passenger numbers in cities like Austin as well as traditional airline hubs such as Denver, Salt Lake City and even Dallas and Houston stems from their position as true transportation alternatives to driving.  Distances are greater as we travel west.  Populations simply become comfortable flying between business centers and then, by extension, geographically dispersed family and friends.  When Southwest Airlines started the concept of short, quick, inexpensive flights between cities in Texas, a transportation planner friend of mine pointed out that Texas suddenly had its own “Metrorail link” similar to the Boston-Washington corridor.  It was just one that took to the skies rather than the rails.

I believe there can be demand generated in sufficient numbers that Pennsylvanians [and maybe West Virginians and western Marylanders and some Ohioans] will use this sort of service for trips that would have meant car travel and all the problems that form of transport presents.  Will it take PIT to the million-passenger-a-month level?  Not by itself certainly.  But it’s part of the plan that will re-establish PIT as a larger, more important airline “hub”, even without status as a hub to a major carrier.  A good move.