interesting facts about RDU

March 11th, 2006

only 25% of people are happy with the flight services out of RDU (Raleigh Durham International airport). I can assure you that I belong to the rest 75%.

The biggest problem was lack of direct flight to major west coast cities, such as LA, San Francisco, San Jose or Seattle. Bussiness travel cares the most on the schedule, having a stop somewhere in the middle really kills the schedule, even worse, the transferred flights can be delayed due to all kinds of reasons. That can very well mean a 8 hour flight to LA. Given that number of daily passengers transfer between LAX and RDU are 560 each way, don’t know why smart airliners still waiting..(Actually Delta will start direct flight to LAX this June, will wait to see how that goes)

That aside, the RDU building really looks ugly, especially terminal A, no different than any other warehouse in the area. Compare to all other newer generation mid-markets airport, RDU cannot match the area’s status as a regional premium technology hub. Even some smaller airport, like Columbus aiport (CMH) looks more mordern! someone please remodel the front face of the building, that is what visitors first see when they arrive.

Too bad that the area business/population growth is not strong enough to lure more airlines to offer more services. After the demise of Independence airline, RDU really needs some other low-fare airlines to fill in the hole, heard the news Virgin America (backed by Virgin Atlantic) and JetBlue are both interested to open their shop in RDU, but none is confirmed yet. Even if JetBlue starts flying, it will only fly to JFK as the beginning…

Oh well..

Entry Filed under: General