After a number of months on the ground, I was eager to get back into the air. During this time, I returned to my native state of Maine after four years in Massachusetts (eight, counting college), and so I sought the opportunity to fly out of the Portland International Jetport (PWM).
As a Maine native, I always wanted to see the Jetport do well. For a number of years, though, it suffered from exorbitantly high fares, a lack of investment, and extensive leakage to out-of-state airports Manchester (MHT) and Boston (BOS).
How things change. Since I last flew out of “the Jetport” — a name I used to take umbrage at given the lack of mainline jet service for many years — the place has transformed for the better in a number of ways. And with the opportunity to attend a conference in Washington D.C., I figured it would be an opportune time to evaluate Portland’s Southwest service.
The Times Are A-Changin’
Just how has the Jetport changed?
First of all, fares are much, much lower. I can’t remember exact numbers, but I recall seeing a round trip flight to Newark for well north of $350 back in the early 2000s. These days, flights on that same route are going for as low as $155, which is less than half of what it cost in 2003. And that’s not even accounting for inflation!
Second, the amount of mainline service the Jetport has compared to then is staggering. Each of the U.S. 3 — American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines — now offer at least seasonal mainline service out of Portland. American offers year-round service to Charlotte, This means not as many crammed, 50-seat regional jets, and more mainline jets, including aircraft in both the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 series.
The majority of these advents have come due to the arrival of low-cost carriers in Portland. Independence Air was first, in 2004, but it suffered some financial trouble and went under in 2005. Therefore, jetBlue’s arrival in 2006 is what I consider to be the start of the Jetport’s “low-cost carrier era.”
The start of said era changed things in a number of ways. For a number of years, Portland had no low-cost carrier, and so most major airlines had monopolies on at least one Portland-involved route. As a result, Portland leaked passengers like crazy to Manchester, NH (MHT) and Boston Logan (BOS), as these airports either had low-cost carriers (MHT) or a broader route network (BOS). When jetBlue arrived in Portland, though, the dynamic changed.
Think of it this way: someone wants to fly from Portland to Chicago O’Hare. Without a low-cost carrier in Portland, United had a monopoly on that route for quite some time, and so it could charge whatever it wanted — say, $300 round trip. When jetBlue showed up, United was still the only airline to fly that route, but there was a difference: even though they’d have to connect both ways through New York JFK, passengers had the ability to fly on that route for significantly less (say, $150 round trip). United still has the only non stop service, but it had to contend with jetBlue undercutting it on these routes. United could still charge more for the premium of non stop service, but it could no longer get away with charging twice what jetBlue charged. Thus, instead of charging $300, United flights started going for $200. Take this scenario, repeat it with other airlines and routes, and you’ve got yourself an airport that people are much more inclined to utilize.
What happened to Mainers flying out of Manchester?
It’s common knowledge that, for a number of years, many Mainers used to eschew Portland and fly out of Manchester. You’d hardly know that looking at passenger numbers in the last few years, with Portland moving ahead of Manchester in terms of total annual passengers served (for the year 2018) for the first time in recent memory, while the latter continues to regress, but it used to be reality.
The old order was chiefly due to lower prices and more options from Manchester, but there were a number of macroeconomic trends at play.
When Manchester landed Southwest in 1998 — as part of Southwest’s longtime strategy to serve the secondary airports in major markets (others in New England included Hartford and Providence) — it had something Portland didn’t: a low-cost carrier.
Moreover, being located next to two New Hampshire cities larger than Portland — Manchester and Nashua — the airport has a significantly larger pool of people to draw from. That’s not even counting the people from northern Massachusetts (Lawrence, Lowell, and Newburyport, to name a few) who are in driving distance from the airport.
Lower prices, a larger catchment area, and more service (at the time). It’s little surprise that Manchester was eating Portland’s lunch for a number of years.
Portland’s ascendancy and Manchester’s regression are not linked, but they are not completely isolated, either. First, jetBlue entered Boston, giving Logan a low-cost carrier of note. By virtue of being the biggest airport in the biggest city in the region, Logan didn’t leak many passengers to Manchester, but that stemmed the tide. The real kicker, though, was Southwest’s decision to enter Logan in 2009. The airline realized it couldn’t afford to avoid the region’s most venerable airport any longer. Suddenly, Manchester’s key differentiator (particularly for Boston-based passengers) was gone.
At the same time, Portland had landed jetBlue in 2006 and AirTran a short while later. When the latter was bought out by Southwest in 2013, Portland now had jetBlue and Southwest. And with Frontier Airlines arriving last year, Portland has three low-cost carriers — Manchester just one.
Unsurprisingly, Boston will still have a number of advantages that Portland won’t be able to eradicate, particularly in terms of its number of destinations and airlines. While living in Massachusetts, I would often look at Portland fares to see if they were comparable. They were generally in the same ballpark, but still a bit more expensive than those that could be found out of Boston for a number of reasons, but it mainly boils down to Boston’s much-more-extensive network of destinations and a significantly larger number of airlines. These factors are unsurprising, to be sure, given the gulf between the two cities’ populations, as well as those of their metro areas, but it still did not make for a compelling enough reason to fly out of Portland, no matter the sentiment.
Until now.
October 19, 2019
Arriving at the airport around 90 minutes before my flight, I found security uneventful and quick. Logan security has generally been pretty quick, to me, but Portland’s was even shorter.
Southwest’s reservation and boarding processes used to irk me, as Southwest was the sole airline that would not let you guarantee (whether free or for a fee) your seat assignment. As someone who prefers the window, this is relatively important to me. However, with the introduction of Basic Economy classes, many airlines — including all of the U.S. 3 — have made it impossible for “lowest-fare” tickets to have a complimentary seat reservation. So, the major (negative) differentiator between Southwest and the other carriers was gone. Still, I was able to secure seat 3A, pretty close to the front of the plane.
The one thing I will give Southwest — despite my desire to reserve seats — is that the boarding process is super efficient. Of course, they might retort that it is so efficient because of the lack of seat assignments. Hey, fair enough.
We pushed back pretty close to on time, and taxied uneventfully out to the holding point for Runway 29. After waiting a couple of moments for an inbound aircraft to land, we took off and turned immediately to the left.
One thing I had always missed while living in Boston was being able to (really) see Maine from the air. I was on a few Boston-originating or Boston-bound intercontinental flights that either climbed out over or descended over Maine, respectively, but — with the exception of arrivals from Beijing and Dublin — we were generally too high or flying too late at night to see much. This time, though, it was cool to be able to see the small towns down the coast from a low enough altitude to make out more minor roads, houses, buildings, and the like rather than just a high-altitude look at major roadways.
It was a nice clear morning, so there was much to be seen. From my seat, I was able to view the Greater Boston area, New York City and its surroundings, and Greater Philadelphia.
Right around the time we hit Philly, we began our descent into Baltimore. I’ve flown into BWI a few times before, but what amazed me was the sheer expanse of countryside that we flew over. I guess I thought of Maryland being this really urban state, although I suppose that my perception is probably skewed given Baltimore’s size.
Anyway, we came right in and touched down on Runway 33L. We were in the air for little more than an hour, and arrived at our gate within a few minutes of landing.
October 20, 2019
After spending Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning at a conference, it was time to head back home. I arrived at BWI with two hours to spare before the flight, which was good because the security lines were somewhat long. Even so, still managed to make it through with enough time to spare.
Our boarding process was similarly efficient as on the outbound flight. Before I knew it, we were on board and ready to push back.
Taxiing out to the runway was similarly uneventful, although I did chuckle at the flight attendant saying “we’ve been cleared for departure” only for us to sit for a bit once at the holding point. There is admittedly a difference between a “departure” and “take off” — the former generally means that you have a flight plan and are cleared to leave your current airport; the latter means you are physically cleared for takeoff — but it seemed a little misleading nonetheless. Regardless, we took off in short order, and were almost immediately climbing through the clouds.
It had been relatively crummy all day, so it was liberating to break out of the clouds and into the sun.
Due to the cloud cover, it was impossible to see where we were. However, I did check the Southwest website (that is free; Wi-Fi costs $8) a few times to see where we were. Before long, we were beginning our descent somewhere between Providence and Boston.
We flew off the coast of Maine for a while, before turning west to set up for the Runway 11 approach. In Boston, I was often on flights that had to fly a long downwind leg before turning base and then final; for non-enthusiasts, that means flying parallel to the runway you’re landing on (in the opposite direction) before making basically a 180 with “square” turns. Given the lesser number of aircraft in Portland, that was not the case — we flew pretty much directly in and landed just before 7:00 p.m.
General Thoughts
I was pretty enthused about flying on a mainline jet out of Portland. I am happy to say that the experience delivered.