Paul Lewis/WASHINGTON DC
Express Airlines I was due to take delivery in late April of its first Bombardier Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) 200LR, clearing the way for a 25% expansion in the Northwest Airlink carrier's operation at its Memphis, Tennessee, hub.
Northwest Airlines has allocated 42 of the 54 CRJ200s ordered in early 1999 to its wholly owned subsidiary Express I. The carrier is due to take nine aircraft by the end of the year, 24 in 2001 and the rest by the end of 2001. The final 12 are also expected to go to Express, while another 70 are on option.
The carrier plans to increase daily Memphis departures from 180 to 220 by introducing a fourth bank of services to its 36 destinations on 1 June and adding a new service to Tallahassee, Florida. "Without the CRJs, Northwest Airlink's ability to create another bank would have been very expensive," says Phil Reed, Express I vice-president marketing.
Express I will initially use the new jets from Memphis to Greenville/Spartanburg, North Carolina, Huntsville and Mobile in Alabama and Wichita, Kansas. The 50-seat CRJs will displace some of the 31 smaller, slower Saab 340 turboprops, which will be used on other routes.
The CRJ200 fleet will be used to open Express I services at Northwest's other two main hubs at Minneapolis/St Paul, Minnesota, and Detroit, Michigan from early 2001. The airline says it plans to keep at least eight of the jets at Memphis, where it recently opened a CRJ flight training centre with Bombardier and FlightSafety International.
"At Memphis we carry more than 1 million passengers a year and a lot of markets are constrained by capacity. In March, there were six markets with load factors in excess of 85%. We're expecting this year we'll probably have around 1.2 million passengers," says Reed.
Northwest plans a corresponding 25% increase in services at Memphis in June, increasing destinations served from 76 to 81 and introducing Airbus A319s and McDonnell Douglas DC-10s to the hub. Most Express I traffic connects with the mainline carrier.
Source: Flight International
