Provo is American’s Future – Cranky Flier

American has decided to add a new dot to its route map. The winner is… Provo, Utah. This might sound like it’s coming from left field, but this is exactly the kind of market that American is trying to serve with its small-city strategy. And regardless of whether this is the right strategy to pursue or not, American is the right network airline to serve a market like this.

Provo might seem like an odd decision. After all, the city lies less than an hour south of Salt Lake City’s airport where there is ample service. Further, Provo is a college town — hello, BYU — which means it’s not exactly known for high-dollar revenue opportunities. But that’s missing the bigger picture.

First and most importantly, the gates between Salt Lake and Provo erected to keep the heathens out just really slow things down. Plus, when you get to SLC, it’s another 17-hour walk to get to the gate if your flight is on the B concourse.

The main issue, however, is that Salt Lake City is a big Delta hub, and so for another airline to make a dent, it needs to offer something unique. Flying to Provo is most definitely unique and gives people a reason to fly American if they live in that region.

The area south of the heathen gates is apparently known as Silicon Slopes. I first heard the term when Breeze CEO David Neeleman said that to me when he was talking about his airline’s expanding presence at the airport. It does appear to be a real thing with several tech companies setting up shop in the area.

With all of this coming together, you’d think airlines would have taken a swing at Provo in the past — and some have, sort of — but it’s only been ultra low-cost operators until now. The big issue had been the airport’s tiny and inadequate terminal. In July 2022, a brand new 4-gate terminal opened — expandable to 10 gates — which really opened up the opportunity to any interested airline.

Frontier had flown a daily flight in from Denver until Jan 2013, and then Allegiant took over and slowly increased flying to around 2x daily. In 2021 it ramped up to more than 3x daily but that was it only until the new terminal opened.

Once the terminal opened, service boomed. Allegiant decided to base airplanes there and grew to 5-6x daily flights going to about a dozen destinations. Most of those are 2x weekly, but Orange County flies 1x daily while Phoenix/Mesa is at 12x weekly. Both have strong Mormon connections.

Breeze moved in as well at that point. It now flies 2x weekly to both Phoenix and Dallas/Fort Worth along with 4-5x weekly to San Francisco and 2x daily to Orange County. As you can tell, Orange County is the place to be.

That has been the extent of the service so far, but now American will enter the market with 2x daily to Dallas/Fort Worth and 1x daily to Phoenix. These are markets that are served already, but that’s not the point. These are American’s hubs, so connectivity is the key here. Allegiant and Breeze don’t have that, but American sure does.

American will serve the market with its secret weapon, the 65-seat CRJ-700. As I wrote previously, American has the ability to put a nearly unlimited number of 65-seaters into its fleet. That is not the case for Delta and United thanks to pilot scope clause restrictions. It makes all too much sense for American to take these airplanes and put them in untested markets like Provo, because it might actually work.

If the market works well, then American can upgauge. If it doesn’t, well, it didn’t hurt to give it a try. It has the regional fleet to be able to experiment like that while others don’t.

I honestly don’t know how well this market will do, but it does give people south of Salt Lake a reason to fly American if they normally would have just flown Delta from SLC. There is some money there with the tech companies in the region, and American can connect those people around the world.

It’s a small market, and the impact on American’s bottom line will not be large, but as long as it contributes anything to the bottom line, American will presumably be happy.