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Joined: 15 Jun 2005
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Location: Indianapolis, IN

I had some interesting conversations tonight. One of the FAs was pretty sure that IND-AMS was going to be added. That is probably incorrect based on another conversation I had. This other conversation was much more detailed and made much more sense.

This info is based on the idea that the bankruptcy judge goes along with the NW plan.

IND will be a NW base along with DTW, MSP, SFO, BOS (JFK I think?), and another coastal city. MEM will NOT. It will no longer be a NW hub. It will be Pinnacle hub with a handfull of NW mainline flights.

IND will be a NW mini-hub. Thats the word that was used. I don't know if thats supposed to be the same as a focus city or what. IND will become a long haul base. That means flights over 3 hours which would be the west coast markets and strangely enough Ankorage, AK. From what I understand IND would keep its Florida routes and business destinations.

The plan is to dump the DC9's so IND service may thin about for a few months as A319's and 757's move into the rotation. Also look for new feeder service from Republic (Chautauqua sp???) with 70 to 90 seat RJs.

I asked about widebody service. No way. lol. Concourse A cannot support it. Since NW is dumping the DC10's that would leave the A330's and it would eat up the space of 2 gates. They already don't have room as it is. When I asked if NW was wanting to cut lose some of their gates I was told that they actually wanted more. Right now NW has 12 or 13 gates but 8 jetways. They have repainted all the parking spaces for the jets to make room for CRJ's. 1, 2 and 3 are normal. There is/was a 4 and 4A which could each support a DC9. There is one jetway for those two spaces. I didn't notice if that had been redesigned to handle what was done to 5, 6, 7 and 8. Those 4 gate areas have been split up into 5A & B, 6A & B, 7A & B and 8A & B. With all that they still had to park jets away from the concourse because of a lack of room.

But what does NW do? Apparently they had been banking on US failing and taking over the entire D concourse. That didn't happen so they were stuck with 8 jetways. However some additional space is becoming available. Will they attempt to take over some jetways in C as well? Perhaps C10 from ATA and use it for the widebody service? Hard to say for sure. If things go as planned NW will be in IND for a long time and their operation will grow significantly. This may end up altering the plans of the midfield terminal.

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Joined: 27 Jun 2005
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Location: St. Louis, MO

1. isn't Memphis already in the position of having a handful of mainline flights now?

2. this conversation with your F/A seems far stretched in my opinion. i can see Northwest trying to dump the DC9's from the Indy operation perhaps. sending the costly jets out to Florida with the seats being sold for less thanks to all the heavy leisure traffic along the route is not as lucrative as sending out the lower operational cost Airbus or the 757, and instead putting the DC9 from other cities to hub routes, where they can collect a higher premium. if Northwest tosses some west coast flying back onto the schedule in the spring, then perhaps i will start buying plans for them to continue being committed to the operation. but if they are yanking routes (Dallas, Austin, St. Louis, etc.) when they claim Pinnacle can make a profit even with 5 seats being sold, then it stands to show otherwise. i do not foresee Indy to Amsterdam service being added. it would take an immense build up of Northwest operations to strengthen such a route launch. if i am wrong, then i will buy you a nice dinner.

3. if Indianapolis -IS- as lucrative as some have said, then i would not be surprised to see Northwest upgrade to a 757 (beyond the Airbus i mentioned earlier) into Ft. Myers or Orlando in response to the ATA pull out. the traffic is there. Northwest has obviously made a splash in the Indy market, so why not? checking the OAG timetables, the only nonstop going to Los Angeles is the Airbus 319 by Northwest headed out in the morning. you know good and well that flight will be going out sold out daily. perhaps a second daily to Los Angeles is in the works? Las Vegas traffic still has two daily nonstops from Southwest and one from Northwest. again, perhaps a second daily from Northwest? such additions might keep other airlines at bay...such as AirTran or even my far fetched idea of Frontier. or even a further stretch...JetBlue...but i didn't say that until it becomes a surprising fact and then i'll claim i called that one out months ago. haha. ;p

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Joined: 15 Jun 2005
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Location: Indianapolis, IN

I don't think IND-AMS will happen until the new terminal opens. The current facilities are just to bad for a serious operation. There is no room for an A330 and the return flight would have to go to that BS international arrivals building. The demand for the service is there. I got the numbers earlier this year. That is without needing any feed service. Facilities will be the holdup.

There were two conversations. One with the FA which was far fetched. There was also a conversation with an agent which was much more informative. NW wants to get rid of the DC9's. It makes sense. They are fuel and maintenance hogs. Since fuel is expensive and NW has dumped its maintenance for outsourcing it makes sense to go with something more reliable. There is going to be major changes coming to NW if they get their way in court. Just watch the news releases over the next few weeks. I wonder how many changes will appear in the Dec 15 timetable.

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Joined: 27 Jun 2005
Posts: 333
Location: St. Louis, MO

Indianapolis to Amsterdam will need commitment of block seat purchases and/or "side financing", similar to what you see with AA flying Raleigh to London, to ever get off the ground.


i am sure the Indianapolis Airport Authority is well aware of their lack of service to some western destinations and lack of frequent service to others. with ATA gone to shits for the time being and being entirely unreliable, IAA is undoubtedly courting the carriers to see who is interested. it'll be interesting to see what kind of 'deals' have to be struck so the real 'deal' can be made.

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Joined: 15 Jun 2005
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Location: Indianapolis, IN

Year 2010 may be the key. The new airport will be starting its 2nd full year of operation, the new stadium will be running, and the major convention center expansion should be about finished. That plus 4 more years of growth in the market should make a transatlantic route more viable.

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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
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Location: Carmel, IN

Here's a new wrinkle to think about. According to my cousin (a UA longhaul pilot) and others I've talked to over the years, airlines make a ton of money on freight on international routes. To the point of making a widebody from JFK to FRA profitable with only 15% of the seats filled (my cousin verified this for the 767 he used to fly on this route - although that was back in 1999 when he told me that). But the point is - international freight pays big time.

Now think about this. NW has major ops in MEM. FedEx has major ops in MEM (their HQ is there, of course). NW now has major ops in IND. FedEx has major ops in IND. NW has major ops in Japan, particularly NRT and Osaka. FedEx, being a major global air freight player, has major business in Japan. NW flies routes to China out of NRT. FedEx has just won some cargo routes out of China, that we know are destined for IND via ANC. IND has lots of room for expansion, with FedEx already making noise about expanding their facilities here. There's also room on the other side of the airport, and the airport authority has already bought the land for the third runway south of I-70 (and we know this is worked into the plan for the new terminal, as this was one reason for the relocation of I-70). Economic development officials in Indiana have made a couple statements about the importance of air cargo in the context of the new airport terminal, etc.

Because of the proximity of their major hubs and operations in MEM and IND, top executives from NW and FedEx probably have played golf together - which is where most business deals get done. Maybe their kids go to the same private schools. Maybe they use the same personal trainers, executive chefs, and yoga gurus. You get my point.

So you see where I'm going with this? Maybe due to IND being FedEx's growth hub for international air cargo, and NW's strength in air cargo, particularly in Asia, the two airlines have something going. Like NW will run some freight out of China via NRT to IND to augment FedEx's China-US routes. And maybe NW gets some freight business from Europe via AMS that FedEx can put a few containers on. The freight has to come to IND to fit with FedEx's logistics plans for sorting, forwarding, and transshipping ex-IND.

So having said all this, maybe IND does get an international flight to Asia on NW. Maybe it's just an all-cargo flight, though. Or maybe three flights a week IND-NRT, which could pay for itself gathering pax who connect in IND and are profitable at low pax loads due to the freight value. Maybe they even get a specially designed plane for this service that has half the passenger compartment taken up by cargo space (KLM has some of these; you can see the seat maps on seatguru.com.) And maybe IND does get some AMS service, maybe three flights/week as well, that would be profitable at low loads due to the freight business. And if FedEx is contracting for some of that freight capacity, NW has some guaranteed income to make this service work.

Is that too much of a stretch?

And I like the idea of some subsidized service in the manner of AA's RDU-LGW route. That's subsidized by Glaxo Smithkline, I believe, the pharma company that has a lot of employees travelling between Research Triangle Park and London. So maybe Lilly has decided, for the right price, they could do the same thing with an IND-AMS flight. After all, for their travelling employees who don't get to use the company's private jets, they have to fly from IND to a U.S. hub and then on to a European city, which might involve going to a European hub first. Maybe Lilly and Roche are in it together. It's not that farfetched.

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Joined: 15 Jun 2005
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Location: Indianapolis, IN

You know what is very interesting about your post is reading a Star News interview with Kish (I believe it was him. Might have been Lovell). It was asked what route he'd most like to see. The one that came up was a direct flight to the far east. I think China was the name that came up. It will be interesting to see what happens. You know NW has a bunch of A330-300's and A330-200's being delivered over the next 2 years. I'm wondering if one of them ends up here.

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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
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Location: Carmel, IN

I wouldn't be at all surprised if NW puts a straight cargo plane on the route. But it would be really interesting if they tried something truly creative. Go to seatguru.com and look up the 747-combi on the KLM seat map listing. And search for it on a.net, you'll see a lot of these. Several international airlines run 747 combi's. KLM's have about 240 seats in coach and 40 in First, 2 classes of service only. Maybe NW could put a combi in service 3 days per week. The cargo load would probably make the flight profitable even if they only sold 30 seats on the thing. Maybe they could configure the plane with more cargo space and less a smaller pax compartment.

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Joined: 15 Jun 2005
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Location: Indianapolis, IN

I don't know if you had seen my post here a few months back or so. But there is relatively significant travel between Indianapolis and Europe. Even more significant numbers between Indiana and Europe. I think it came to like three A330-300 loads per day. I think it was like two loads worth between Indianapolis and Europe and three total for the entire state. I think they could at least fill an A330-200 daily between IND and AMS. At least pretty close. The cargo deal could be what seals it. I have no idea what the travel numbers are between Indianapolis/Indiana and China and/or Japan.

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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
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Location: Carmel, IN

I don't recall your post - I'll have to search for it. That's really interesting data, though. I wonder what drives the Indiana-Europe traffic? And is it concentrated enough in and around AMS to make IND-AMS-Connection viable? Or is it scattered widely, or perhaps concentrated more in London or Frankfurt such that IND-ORD/NYC-LON/FRA would be preferred by pax?

Also, how do you find numbers like that? Faremeasure only has domestic routes.

But yeah, I wonder about the freight aspect. They could have a deal with any number of companies who have logistics ops in/around Indy to transport critical freight to final destination by truck from here. Indy is much better as a truck freight hub than MEM is. MEM is a barge/rail town, which isn't the kind of high-value freight that you transport on cargo planes.

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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
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Location: Carmel, IN

I think I found the post in IND NEWS forum. Says something like 950 pax per day to/from international destinations, not including Canada/Mexico. How many of those are Europe? Because a lot of that may also be the Carribean, a handful Central/South America, and probably several Asia. But you're still on the right track - I bet you could reliably predict a daily average of 250-300 pax IND-Europe. If you assume NW could capture half of that with an IND-AMS flight, on average, they'd have an A330 filled every other day. This would be the perfect route for the 787, of course.

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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
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Just noted that NW runs the DC10 MEM-AMS once a day. If they're really going to de-emphasize MEM hub and build up IND, then maybe they can get enough connecting pax to swap this route to IND. Maybe in conjunction with a freight contract and possibly even a minimum purchase agreement with Roche/Lilly, et. al., they could do this even more comfortably.

I wouldn't have believed IND would ever get non-CanMex international service, but considering everything we've talked about, I could see it happening now.

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Joined: 15 Jun 2005
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The numbers were all European traffic. The nice thing about going to AMS with NW or LHR with British Airways is that it doesn't matter what the end point in Europe is. They just catch a connection over there. Arrivals in Europe is alot easier to deal with than arrivals coming back to the US. I'd rather make my connection in Europe than making it here. I'd rather make my return flight to the US and just drive home instead of hiking across a big place like ORD, wait for 2 hours for a connecting flight, fly home, reclaim my luggage in IND then drive home.

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Joined: 15 Jun 2005
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Location: Indianapolis, IN

The biggest problem with NW trying to get international service (transatlantic) out of concourse A is the limited space for jets to park. The wingspan of the A330 is over 200 feet. But what about KLM and the 767-300? It has a wingspan of only 156 feet which is only 30 feet greater than the 757-200. The wingspan would be nearly 50 feet shorter than that of the larger A330. It might be able to fit at concourse A. The 220 seat configuration of the KL 767-300 would be more appealing to the IND market than the 243 seat configuration of the A330-200 or the 300 seat configuration of the A330-300 Northwest has.

The KLM 767-300 might very well be the perfect jet for IND to take the first step in transatlantic service.

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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
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Location: Carmel, IN

Good point, but I would assume that NW would want to add the service within their own fleet before they go the codeshare route. One thing to note is that CO is flying the 757 on longhaul routes from EWR to some of the small European cities they've recently added. NW has a subfleet of 757's that fly from the west coast to Hawaii or on transcons. Perhaps some of those could be used for IND-Europe?

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Joined: 15 Jun 2005
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Does the 757-200 have the range to fly IND-AMS?

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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
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Actually, I think it's just a little too far. CO flies the 757 from EWR to TXL (Berlin), which Great Circle Mapper says is 3980 miles. And comments on FT suggest the plane frequent makes a fuel stop. GCM shows IND-AMS at 4171. So if you're going to do it with a Boeing bird, it's probably got to be a 767 or bigger.

On the other hand, you could probably stretch a 757 from IND to MAN, which would be really useful.

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Didn't ATA fly the 757-200 from Indianapolis to Shannon Ireland? Or was there a stop in the US on that run?

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Yeah, I believe they did. That's 3630 miles, well within range of the 757. You could fly IND to DUB, SNN, MAN - but it would be a little bit of a stretch to go all the way to London and much too far to go to the continent.

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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
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Location: Carmel, IN

While I still support my earlier supposition about international service from IND, here's an article that might shed some light on decision-making related to international service from second-tier cities.

http://www.airportbusiness.com....jsp?id=4714&siteSection=4

It talks about PIT losing service to LGW and FRA when the US dehubbing took place. The issues keeping this service away from PIT might be similar to those found at IND.