Changes In Nature Of Commercial Flight Industry Could Benefit Small Airports

The nature of commercial flight undergoing changes, and it could be a benefit to smaller airports like the Upper Cumberland Regional Airport.

Airport Manager Dean Selby said a long-term restructuring could see a rise in the popularity of smaller carriers as larger carriers tend to be less interested in small markets.

“There’s a multitude of these smaller carriers that is creating an opportunity for them to provide better service and perhaps direct service to more makerts than you could by what we call the old hub and spoke method,” Selby said. “Which is where you go to Atlanta, and get on another flight to go somewhere.”

Selby said this is a trend the airport watches every week. He said they keep track of what airports cancel what flights, if there is a market they stop serving, or if they’re adding routes and how.

Selby said the news talks about large carriers cutting flights and canceling them when there is a plethora of small carriers that are actually expanding services and filling in those gaps. He said long-term, this might be a better way of handling commercial flight in general.

“The reason that I say that is the larger airlines are geared toward big airplanes moving lots of people from hub to hub,” Selby said. “Well, perhaps a smaller airline that only concentrates on the smaller cities could do it better because that’s their specialty.”

Selby said he believes we could start seeing airlines specialize in certain markets. He said this is still preliminary information, so we won’t know for about a year or so if that is actually how it could turn out.