Holiday travelers choosing air this year can expect fewer flight choices and smaller aircraft, according to a report released today. The new report from Reconnecting America’s Transportation Networks reviews the decline in air service levels at U.S. commercial airports in the two years since the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

Missed Connections II, which uses Official Airline Guide data to update the
findings of the first analysis published last December, finds that air service levels overall have continued to decline in the past year, both nationally and at most
airports. The report ranks the ten airports losing the most service in three categories: large hubs accounting for over half of air traffic, medium and small
hubs and non-hub commercial service airports. Overall, large hubs lost 11.1 percent of all weekly flights between September 2001 and 2003, while small and
medium hub airports lost 9.6 percent of all flights in the same period.

Dulles Airport lost the most service of the large hub airports at 29 percent in the
past two years with Boston’s Logan Airport second with a loss of 27.8 percent. Los Angeles International Airport was third with a loss of 27.3 percent over the
two-year period. A few big airports gained flights, with Cincinnati, Ohio gaining almost 16 percent since fall 2001, and Chicago’s Midway airport almost 11
percent. Those airports that gained flights did so largely through flights by regional airlines with smaller aircraft.

Atlantic City lost the most service of small and medium hubs at almost 38 percent
since September 2001, with Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina losing 30.5 percent and Kansas City third at a 30.2 percent two-year flight loss, Non-hub commercial
airports in small cities have experienced some of the deepest cuts, with Meridian, Mississippi losing 75.9 percent, Waterloo, Iowa losing 75.7 percent, and
Reading, PA losing 70 percent over the two-year study period.

“The impact on my community has been mixed,” said John Robert Smith, Mayor of Meridian, Mississippi and Chairman of the Board of Reconnecting America. “We lost access to Dallas, but replaced turboprop with regional jet service.
Initially, the flight schedules for our new jet service were not conducive to business travel but we worked with the airline, got a much better
schedule and anticipate increased business travel. Meridian is fortunate to also have Amtrak and Greyhound connections.”

The reduction in air service reflects the financial reality of the nation’s big airlines. The U.S. airline industry has undergone a substantial restructuring in the past
two years, brought about by corrections in oversupply in 2001, reductions in demand due to September 11 and to the faltering economy, and crushing debt
loads carried by major airlines. These restructuring trends include continuing growth for low-cost, point-to-point carriers like Southwest and Jet Blue, an 86%
growth rate in the use of smaller regional jets, and a shift from the big hub and spoke air carriers to their smaller regional affiliates.

Hank Dittmar, co-author of the report and president of Reconnecting America,
said: “These service cuts represent a fundamental restructuring of the air travel network, not a temporary adjustment. They will have long term effects on aviation
access to many cities.”

The report sees opportunities for creating a more reliable system through
fostering intermodal linkages between air and rail and bus, and makes recommendations for national policy to restore service lost to smaller
communities, to fund “travelport” projects to connect air, rail and bus at major airports and to create a new national travel policy. “We need policy that views the
connections between these systems as vital parts of that economy, as “travel ports,” said Scott Bernstein, co-director of the project and president of the Center
for Neighborhood Technology. “The reliability, security and productivity of the transport system would be enhanced.”

The report notes that there are several markets where bus and rail provide an
alternative. Offering train or bus service on shorter distance trips frees up air capacity for more profitable longer trips. The report also recommends connecting
airports to rail as is already done in Europe, Japan and at Newark International to make America’s transportation more efficient and convenient.

The research team conducted an analysis of nearly 400,000 flights described in
the Official Airline Guide OAG in examining comparable weeks during the fall of 2001, 2002 and 2003.

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The full report is online at http://www.reconnectingamerica.org/ and http://www.cnt.org/

Missed Connections II is one of a series of reports from the Reconnecting
America Transportation Networks project that examine current issues in intercity travel in the U. S. and offer recommendations for a more economically stable and
integrated system of U.S. travel. Reconnecting America seeks to redefine national policies for intercity travel in order to integrate our separately functioning
aviation, passenger rail and intercity bus systems into a more convenient, secure, financially viable and sustainable network. The project is a joint initiative
of two non-profits: Reconnecting America and the Center for Neighborhood Technology.

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