OAG Travel News

I’ve always been a fan of American football.  In fact, some of the first words I learned to spell were the names of National Football League (NFL) teams.  (Believe it or not, I learned this even before learning to spell the names of airlines or aircraft!)  The January playoff-game weekends leading up to the Super Bowl are among my favorite of the year.  Each game is the end of the season for one team, and the urgency associated is usually compelling.

Predicting Super Bowl winners is certainly not a new pastime.  But I am not aware of anyone predicting a winner based on levels of air service.  So I thought that I would make some educated guesses as to the winner of Super Bowl XLIII (it is a tradition to use Roman numerals when referring to Super Bowls) based on the outcome of the first-round playoff games this past weekend (January 3/4, 2009).

Service by Southwest Airlines
All of this weekend’s winners have service by Southwest Airlines.  (Interestingly, three of the losers currently have no Southwest service.)  In the one case where two teams with Southwest Airlines service played each other this Wild Card weekend – Indianapolis Colts vs. San Diego Chargers – the city with more Southwest service – San Diego – claimed victory.

If this pattern continues and the team with the most service by Southwest Airlines hoists the famed Vince Lombardi Trophy on February 1, the opponents of Super Bowl XLIII will be the Arizona Cardinals and. the Baltimore Ravens, and the winner will be the Arizona Cardinals.  Phoenix currently enjoys 60 more daily flights on Southwest than Baltimore (BWI).

US Airways Hubs
Both the Philadelphia Eagles and the Arizona Cardinals (who play in a suburb of Phoenix) won this weekend.  Both teams represent cities that are hubs for US Airways.  In addition, the Carolina Panthers (who play in US Airways stronghold Charlotte) and the Pittsburgh Steelers will play their first playoff games next week.  Granted, Pittsburgh is no longer a US Airways hub.  But no other legacy carrier is as well represented in the playoffs as US Airways.  In addition, the Baltimore Ravens – home to a former US Airways hub – also advanced this weekend after beating the Miami Dolphins.

Following the logic that the largest US Airways hub will win Super Bowl XLIII, the game’s opponents will be the Carolina Panthers and the Pittsburgh Steelers, with victory awarded to the Carolina Panthers, home to the largest US Airways hub.

Service to Tampa, Florida
Super Bowl XLIII will take place at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.  So my final Super Bowl air service prediction is that the team with the most service to Tampa will be the winner of the game.

With three airports serving metropolitan New York – and a total of 38 daily flights to and from Tampa – the New York Giants would seemingly be the winner; no other team remaining in the playoffs has as much service to Tampa.  But, if I want to choose just one New York airport to even the playing field a bit – all other cities remaining in the playoffs only have one airport – it would have to be Newark (in neighboring New Jersey) due to the fact that the Giants play at Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.  In this scenario, the Super Bowl would be a matchup between the Carolina Panthers and the Baltimore Ravens, with the Carolina Panthers claiming victory due to one more daily departure to Tampa from Charlotte than from Baltimore.

Those are just three possible air service predictions for the winner of Super Bowl XLIII.  I’ll update you next week on how my predictions fared in the next round of the playoffs!

Source: Official Airline Guide (OAG) Schedule Tapes; data reflects air service levels for January 2009 only.

Note: Game winners and losers predicted based on schedule set forth by National Football League rules.

OAG contributor Laura Jackson was just two weeks old when she took her first flight on Piedmont Airlines.  In junior high school, she developed a business plan for her own airline.  Today she manages strategy and policy issues at one of the world's busiest airports and provides original content and aviation industry analysis for OAG.