Continental Abandoning Islip

According to this A.net thread...

http://www.airliners.net/discussions/ge ... n/2201250/

...CO will discontinue service at ISP effective Sept 6th.

Note that the post wasn't sourced, and there's nothing about it on Google News.

When Southwest enterers a new city they proclaim that the city goes through what they call "the Southwest effect". The "Southwest effect" supposedly makes other carriers lower their fares, increase their service, and raise their customer service standards to Southwest levels. Its more and more apparent to me that the "Southwest effect' is similar to the Home Depot syndrome, where a large organization comes in, bottoms out the price and puts everyone else out of business. Now while Southwest isn't putting CO out of business in general they are forcing the majors and others to pull service from ISP. Just in the last couple of years, AA, Delta, Spirit, and now CO have either reduced or eliminated service from ISP.

The result is people losing their jobs and tax revenue for the town being reduced. I wonder how long it will be until ISP resembles Love Field in Dallas where you have one airline and one regional carrier with limited service? One also has to raise the question can ISP afford to only have one large carrier? Can the revenue from just Southwest support airport operations? Will customers start to turn away from ISP and Southwest because the route network isn't there? Time will tell if the "Southwest effect " at ISP doesn't backfire.

I will miss seeing them on final. I will need to go out my front door more often with my camera in the next few months.

WOOPS, We posted at the same time Tom. Thanks for the informitive post, it was well said but I do think that there are more customers going to ISP now more then ever due to Southwest. I think Southwest is still better for the airport but would love to see some more heavy hitters there instead of closing up shop! I just wish they had a better paint scheme then the blue beach ball theme. BBBOOORRRIIINNNGGG

If Southwest may eventually have such a negative effect on the airport as a whole, why does ISP ops give them slots? Or as long as Southwest is growing, is doesn't matter who leaves?

Airlines leaving just makes space for future expansion of current airlines.

The demand at ISP isn't going to change much with these airlines leaving, especially with Southwest's presence keeping fares low.

America is a capatalistic society. It's unfortunate these airlines were mismanaged in the 90's, while the economy was riding high, but at the same time most of them took advantage of American consumers by over-pricing. This is the essence of a capatalistic society. Airlines are now feeling pressure by the consumers, in moderate economic times, to produce low fares, which many can't.

As much as I hate to say it, I wonder if the new plan for US will be to bail on ISP. Their flights on the buzz buckets are almost always full, but they cry about low yields.

If only their management had a clue........

Am I correct that we are now down to US, DL and WN??

Leaves a lot of room for new players now doesn't it?

Who would ISP realistically be appealing to, though?

Yes Art you are correct, ISP is now only served by DL, WN, and US. I don't see any other logical player at ISP other then who is already there. I'd be shocked to see JetBlue or AirTran enter ISP. With the deal made between Islip Town and Southwest Airlines I think Southwest would be pretty ticked off if either JetBlue or AirTran came to town.

Phil you have a point that in their minds as long as Southwest grows I don't think it matters who leaves. Its a win win for Southwest and if the airport can remain profitable its a win win for Islip Town. The loser is the customer however, even with Southwest's lower fares, their route structure and frequency often times doesn't match the larger players who are now moving out of ISP. We're a capital society but I'm for competition and I'd love to see AirTran or JetBlue perhaps make a play, but that depends on what backroom deals were made between the town and Southwest.

I'm still in disbelief that Long Island can provide enough traffic for Southwest to even exist out there so well. It surprises me that they can even fill a plane.

Man, this is really dissapointing. Another one bites the dust at ISP. I'm wondering if perhaps US Airways Express will leave ISP too. I would really like to see Song airlines (not ever going to happen in a million years), F9 with service to Denver, FL, and/or NK at ISP.

NK was already at ISP once and was asked to leave. Their flights were so unreliable and their customer service so bad their customers got into fistfights in the terminal more than once.

I doubt they'll be back, although their new management is pretty talented. They were the two marketing guys from US Air who almost got it...

And we have Ben Baldanza to thank for attempted the changes which gave rise to the "Cockroaches" at US.

Art, if I remember correctly part of the problem with NK's operation at ISP they had
I think 4 or 5 flights per day but they all left mid-afternoon within around a 2 hour time period.
Since they had no connecting passengers this was just plain old "STUPID MANAGEMENT"
as this caused unnecessary HUGE lines at the ticket counter and gates and even on a good
day some inbound flights had to hold for a gate to open. They really shot themselves in
the foot out their !

Regards

LGA777

The flights were Continental Express only to CLE...I think they're going to redeploy the a/c to another area...CoEx has also dropped flights to HPN as well...I think they feel they have enough coverage of the NYC area through EWR. LGA and JFK...WN hasn't announced service to CLE...FYI...when WN 1st started service to BWI the 1st 2 destinations were CLE and MDW...since then as WN has made BWI a major city in their route network, CO has actually increased the # of flights to CLE from BWI...so they don't necessarily run all other carriers out of town...

I remember when NK was at ISP! I flew them quite a few times from ISP to different florida destinations. I was browsing through some old timetables and I found some from when NK, KW, and FL served ISP!!