US Airways Adds Salt Lake City Link at Philadelphia Hub

US major US Airways is to introduce a new link from its key international gateway at Philadelphia International Airport to Salt Lake City, in the State of Utah. The daily operation is due to commence from June 8, 2013 and will be operated using a 150-seat Airbus A320, supporting point-to-point demand and offering one-stop access from Salt Lake City to destinations throughout the East Coast, Europe and the Caribbean.

"We are excited to expand our service for customers traveling to and from our international gateway in Philadelphia with a new daily flight to Salt Lake City," said Andrew Nocella, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Planning, US Airways. With the new service, US Airways will operate 462 weekday departures to 111 destinations from Philadelphia International Airport to destinations in the US, Canada, Latin America, Europe and the Caribbean.

This latest network growth will place US Airways in direct competition with Delta Air Lines, which has historically served this market for over twenty year. Delta first launched flights on the route in June 1992 with a daily Boeing 727 operation and although services were suspended between October 1994 and August 1997, the carrier has subsequently offered constant service with an up to twice daily operation during certain periods. It currently operates a daily flight using a mix of Airbus A320 Family and Boeing 737 Next-Generation aircraft.

During the first nine months of 2012 an estimated 101,000 O&D passengers travelled on the route, down 7.9 per cent on the same period in 2011. With its non-stop offering, Delta obviously currently dominates this market but US Airways held a 6.5 per cent share of O&D demand between the two cities during this period with a one-stop offering via Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. This was up from 5.9 per cent for the first nine months of 2011.

In the table below we highlight O&D air service demand between Philadelphia and Salt Lake City between 2007 and 2011, a period that has seen a 5.4 per cent increase in O&D demand.