E-Mail Express

Name:

Company:

E-mail:

Phone:

Horizon passengers up 50% to record, loads dip with added flights

SONOMA COUNTY – More than a year after commercial flights returned to the North Bay, they are still drawing record numbers of passengers. But the increase has not been steep enough to keep up with the addition of new flights, leading to more empty seats, according to boarding data from Horizon Air and the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport.

A record 16,365 passengers flew in and out of Sonoma County on Horizon flights in April, up 50 percent from April 2007, which was the first full month of service. The number of daily flights climbed even faster, doubling from three to six as service expanded from Los Angeles and Seattle to Portland and Las Vegas.

As a result, the average load factor – the percentage of seats that are full – dropped from 82 percent in April 2007 to 66 percent in April 2008, falling below Horizon’s average of 69 percent airline-wide.

According to Horizon spokeswoman Jen Boyer, it is common for planes to fly with fewer passengers as more flights are added to serve a particular market. “When you double the capacity, you don’t suddenly double the amount of people who want to fly,” Ms. Boyer said. “It builds up.”

Ms. Boyer said some of the lower-than-expected performance numbers are caused by weakness in “the economy in general,” and Horizon has no plans to pull from the Sonoma County market. “Santa Rosa is doing OK right now,” she said. “We’re always keeping an eye on it.”

According to Airport Manager Jon Stout, the lower load factors reflect lower performance on some of the newer flights.

“The expectation was that the flights were doing well, as were shown in the early numbers, and they [Horizon] thought there would be enough demand that they could add capacity and would still see high numbers,” Mr. Stout said. “Some of the changes did not do as well as expected.”

Mr. Stout said the weakest trip was a third daily flight to Los Angeles, which was added last October and canceled a month ago to make room for a new flight to Las Vegas.

In its first few weeks, the Las Vegas flight’s performance has only been OK, he said, partly because the return flight doesn’t arrive in Sonoma County until 12:20 a.m. “They’re looking into changing the flight times on that route in the fall,” he said.

Also underperforming is a new seasonal flight to Seattle – added seven weeks ago – that arrives too late to connect with other flights in the Northwest.

Airline industry expert Gerald Bernstein said Horizon’s strong early performance in Sonoma County was unusually high for new service, and fewer filled seats should be expected as more flights are added.

“If they’re increasing capacity and still at a 60 percent load factor, they’re probably happy with what is happening in Santa Rosa,” said Mr. Bernstein, managing director of the Stanford Transportation Group, a San Francisco consulting firm.

Meanwhile, Mr. Stout said the airport is talking to ExpressJet about potential flights to Long Beach, Ontario, San Diego and Reno. “If it does materialize it wouldn’t be until next year,” Mr. Stout said.