May 08–The Bureau of Economic Research has released data showing airlines may have cut the number of available seats on aircraft making non-stop flights to the territory, though the Tourism Department says its data sees growth in arrival numbers.
The Bureau of Economic Research report is referred to as "Major Carrier Direct Flight Seats" information, related to the major carrier flights coming directly to the territory.
According to the bureau's data published so far for 2017, the number of direct flight seats decreased 4.7 percent from January to June 2017, as compared to the same time in 2016.
"The Bureau of Economic Research is given this data by the Port Authority. The information is then compiled in a manner for public dissemination," said bureau Senior Economist Donnie Dorsett.
"The Major Carriers that operate at both Cyril E. King and Henry E. Rohlsen Airports provide the USVI Port Authority their operational schedules during a given period," Dorsett noted, and that is the basis for the numbers reported on the bureau's website.
However, Tourism Commissioner Beverly Nicholson Doty said data provided by OAG, an air travel intelligence company, shows increases in the number of arriving seats for the first quarter of this year.
"OAG reports on all seats into the territory, and includes flights on regional carriers serving the territory, including Cape Air and Seaborne from Puerto Rico," she said.
"OAG records that in the first quarter of this calendar year, arriving seats into St. Thomas were 279,740 compared with 275,907 over the first quarter of last year," Nicholson Doty said. "This is a year-over-year increase of 3,833 total seats, a 1.3 percent growth," she said.
"During the same quarter, there were 74,369 arriving seats into St. Croix, versus 72,569 seats" in the first quarter of 2017, "an increase of 1,800 total seats, or 2.4 percent growth," she said.
"Based on information from the airlines, the Department of Tourism forecasts an uptick in seat capacity for both districts this quarter," she said.
Seth Kaplan, an airline expert and managing partner of Airline Weekly — an aviation analysis company — said calculations of major air carrier direct flight seats consider the number of seats available on flights from outside the territory — primarily the continental United States but also from San Juan.
The numbers are based on the daily scheduled major air carrier flights arriving from outside the Caribbean during the first week of a given month.
"The numbers would correlate roughly with the number of visitors you might expect to arrive by air," Kaplan said. "So, a decline isn't good, although, of course, people can also arrive by other modes of transportation," he said.
"A decline in seats doesn't necessarily mean fewer arrivals by air if flights are fuller, but generally, capacity correlates roughly with traffic," he said.
For the first four months of the year, the bureau's seat data showed overall decreases, and decreases for St. Thomas specifically. St. Croix saw increases, but they number in the low hundreds.
In May, St. Thomas registered no change when compared to the year before, according to the bureau's report. St. Croix saw an increase of from 3,045 to 3,130, or 2.8 percent.
Bureau projections for June suggest a 14 percent drop for St. Thomas. The data suggests St. Croix will see a 7.2 percent increase in June, giving the territory as a whole a 10.9 percent drop.
The data available from different resources doesn't all agree, as shown by the difference in the numbers provided by Nicholson Doty and the numbers from the Bureau of Economic Research.
The data sets may include different variables, Kaplan said.
According to an Airline Weekly analysis from a third external analysis, the territory has seen declines, but they were smaller than those presented in the bureau's data.
Kaplan said those numbers are from Diio Mi, an aviation market intelligence report his company uses.
He said he isn't disputing the bureau's data, but just that his data seems less worrisome.
"For June, I show seats on the same five major carriers — American, Delta, JetBlue, Spirit and United — down 2 percent in each direction between the USVI and points outside the USVI, from 18,709 weekly seats each direction for June 2016 to 18,334 for June 2017. For all carriers — Seaborne Airlines and Air Sunshine are the top two aside from the other five — I show a 1.2 percent increase, from 22,453 in June 2016 to 22,729 in June 2017," he said.
Asked to explain further, Kaplan replied: "My data — which obviously doesn't correlate with their data — shows 5.7 percent fewer weekly flights for June but only 2 percent fewer weekly seats for those five major airlines. So that implies fewer flights but more seats per flight."
That, he said, could be explained by the use of larger aircraft or just airlines squeezing more seats onto the same aircraft.
"For all carriers, I show an 8.5 percent increase in flights and that 1.3 percent increase in seats — not surprising, since the non-major carriers operate smaller aircraft, it would take many more flights to move the needle a little with respect to seats," he said.
"Seats is a more important measure than flights, from a tourism perspective, because seats will correlate more closely with the number of eventual visitors," he said.
— Contact Jonathan Austin at 340-714-9104 or email jaustin@dailynews.vi.
