Virgin America believes it still has plenty of growth opportunities out of San Francisco and Los Angeles, cities where it already has the bulk of its capacity.
"We've only scratched the surface," says airline chief executive David Cush at the Cowen Global Transportation Conference. Cush says the two cities hold a lot of appeal to the airline as they are both "high wealth, high income" areas.
The Burlingame, California-based carrier already operates on most of the top 10 domestic markets out of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Exceptions are Denver from both cities and Honolulu from Los Angeles.
Cush says the airline has plenty of room to grow in the next 20 domestic markets, of which it is now now serving only a handful.
Out of San Francisco, some top markets that the airline does not currently fly to include Orange County, Atlanta, Phoenix, Philadelphia and Minneapolis.
At Los Angeles, unserved markets include Atlanta, San Jose, Oakland, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and Portland.
Cush has said previously that intra-California routes will play a role in the airline's network growth. Besides Orange County, San Jose and Oakland, a number of Californian cities are among the top markets now unserved by Virgin America. These include Long Beach out of San Francisco, and Sacramento out of Los Angeles.
Elsewhere in the airline's network, Cush again hinted that the airline's Dallas Love Field-Austin route could be on the chopping block at some point in the future. The carrier launched service on the short-haul route in April, choosing to hold off on service to Chicago O'Hare.
Cush says the Austin route has done what the airline was hoping it would do, which was to create feed traffic to Love Field for the airline's service to New York LaGuardia and Washington National. But he also acknowledges: "I don't think we necessarily consider that a permanent best use of those slots...there are some decisions that we probably have to make as we go forward."
Virgin America operates out of two gates at Love Field that it won last year, following a divestiture by American Airlines.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
