New Orleans to Europe Direct Flights! Coming this Spring!

            In the past few months, British Airways and Condor Airlines have announced plans to begin direct flights from New Orleans to London’s Heathrow Airport and Frankfurt, Germany. The flights, set to begin in the spring, will be the first direct flights to Europe from Louis Armstrong International Airport since 1982. The opening of these two routes is the result of years of work by the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, Greater New Orleans Inc., a regional economic development group, local and state government, and the representatives of the airport itself. The Convention Bureau established an office in London and lobbied tour operators, travel agents, and travel brokers to create a demand for direct flights to New Orleans. Last year, New Orleans was on the short list to receive a British Airways direct to London flight but lost out to San Jose, as British Airways viewed Silicon Valley as a more attractive option. They worried that business travelers, who pay more for tickets and travel more frequently than seasonal travelers, would not have as much a demand to travel to New Orleans.

             The opening of these new routes shows that New Orleans’ investments in the tourism industry after Hurricane Katrina have begun to pay off. Louis Armstrong International Airport is in the midst of spending nearly one billion dollars to construct a new state of the art terminal, set to open in 2018. Last year, the airport had 10.7 million passengers, the most in its seventy year history. Visitors to New Orleans spent a record seven billion dollars in 2015 and by opening direct international routes New Orleans opens itself up to even more tourist revenue. International travelers tend to spend longer in their destinations, up to 3 weeks, and spend more money overall than domestic travelers. Tapping into this high end travel market will open up a line of revenue into the city and state’s coffers. Additionally, the opening up of these routes means that travelers won’t have to fly to Atlanta, Houston, or Dallas before heading to Europe. London and Frankfurt, besides being desirable destinations on their own, are hubs to pretty much anywhere in Europe.

            The opening of these routes is also the result of profound changes in the airline industry. For anyone who follows the airline industry closely (something I’m sure you all do), it was no surprise that British Airways announced that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner would fly the London-New Orleans route.  This plane, first designed in the late 1990s after Boeing saw a decline in orders for its larger long haul airplanes, represents the latest trend in aviation. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the spike in fuel prices in the 2000s, airlines valued fuel efficiency over speed. The Dreamliner offers excellent fuel efficiency—102 miles per gallon per seat—it is also light, and has an operational range of 8,000 miles. While it only carries 220 passengers, the other bonuses of the plane make up for its smaller seating capacity. The existence of the Dreamliner with its fuel efficiency and long operational range signals the triumph of point-to-point flying over the old hub-and-spoke model.

In past decades and exemplified by planes like Airbus’s A380—the largest ever passenger plane that holds 615 people on two separate floors—airlines operated on the hub-and-spoke model. In this model, for long distances say across the United States, airlines operated one hub on each coast, say New York and Los Angeles. If you were on the East Coast and needed to get to the West Coast you had to fly from wherever you were to New York and then to L.A. This was great for airlines as they had fewer routes to maintain and could pack their planes full, but it also drove up costs as it’s really expensive to operate out of major hubs with higher airport fees, cost of ground staff, terminal space, and other associated costs. 

The 787 Dreamliner

            The Dreamliner has made the point-to-point model much more feasible and has made opening less popular routes, like London to New Orleans possible. Compared to the hub and spoke model, point-to-point travel is cheaper for the consumer and the airline. The consumer no longer has to take multiple flights to get to their destination—and in the case of New Orleans often flying in the wrong direction to Houston or Dallas. Airlines incur fewer costs because flying out of an airport like New Orleans is cheaper than major hubs. Airport fees, ground staff, gates, and all the associated costs of flying are cheaper at a less traveled airport. Additionally, as fuel prices have dropped in recent years, fuel efficient planes like the Dreamliner are even cheaper to operate. And with an operational range of 8,000 miles, the Dreamliner can easily travel between different European and North American cities.

             The opening of the New Orleans to London and New Orleans to Frankfurt routes are the results of long term trends in the airline industry that will make travelling internationally easier and more accessible to people than ever before.