St. Louis gets its first transatlantic flight to continental Europe in nearly 20 year
 

It's technically a city discussion, though not exactly about urban form. But considering Saint Louis hasn't had a Trans-Atlantic flight since 2003(!), and the city has been digging out of a massive hole caused by the collapse of TransWorld Airlines, this is fantastic news for the city's future, and something that's definitely a consideration for upper-middle class remote workers:

https://thepointsguy.com/news/luftha...nstop-flights/

Saint Louis becomes the 33rd metro in USA to have year-round non-stop service to Europe.

The new list is:

1. Atlanta
2. Austin
3. Baltimore
4. Boston
5. Cape Coral
6. Charlotte
7. Chicago
8. Cincinnati
9. Dallas
10. Denver
11. Detroit
12. Houston
13. Las Vegas
14. Los Angeles
15. Miami
16. Minneapolis
17. Nashville
18. New Orleans
19. New York
20. Orlando
21. Philadelphia
22. Phoenix
23. Pittsburgh
24. Portland
25. Raleigh
26. Saint Louis
27. Salt Lake City
28. San Diego
29. San Francisco
30. San Jose
31. San Juan
32. Seattle
33. Tampa
34. Washington

Top 10 metro areas missing Trans-Atlantic service:

1. Riverside - 4,599,839 (they use Los Angeles International)
2. San Antonio - 2,558,143
3. Sacramento - 2,397,382
4. Kansas City - 2,192,035
5. Columbus - 2,138,926
6. Indianapolis - 2,111,040
7. Cleveland - 2,088,251
8. Virginia Beach - 1,799,674
9. Providence - 1,676,579 (they use Boston Logan International)
10. Jacksonville - 1,605,848

^^ Saint Louis was #2 on the list before today.

That's a lot of metro areas!

In Brazil, São Paulo GRU handles over 70% of international traffic, it's the Brazilian gateway, which used to be Rio de Janeiro GIG up to the early 1990's.

Aside those, metro areas with flights to Europe are: Porto Alegre, Campinas, Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Salvador, Recife, Fortaleza and Belém.

10 overall.

and as you pointed out, riverside just uses LAX, so st. louis was really the largest independent US market without a non-stop to europe.

looking at the others on the list, san antonio and sacramento might be too close to austin and SF, respectively, to get their own euro flight any time soon.

after those two are the next tier down midwest metros that are all roughly the same size. cincy is in that same size range and already has a euro flight, so perhaps one of them might be next?

Looking closer, actually Cleveland is the biggest unattended market. De facto, it's an almost 3 million people metro area and no links to Europe. Even in Brazil there are smaller metro areas with them.

^Ohio is also the largest state without a major airline hub. Because Cincinnati's airport is actually in Kentucky, Ohio is also technically the largest state in the country with no direct flights to Europe or Asia.

Ohio seems like a great candidate for a high speed rail network connecting its major metros. They should focus on linking the state's major airports by rail, IMO.

Also, I lied. Apparently Cape Coral (760,822 people!) somehow managed to snag non-stop flights to Frankfurt starting in March on Eurowings. Are there really Germans vacationing in Southwest Florida?

So Saint Louis is #34. I've edited the list above.

While the IE doesn't have direct flights to Europe, it does have direct flights to Asia and Central America from the Ontario airport. I'm currently seeing Taipei and San Salvador as destinations, but I'm pretty sure they used to also have a flight to Beijing, too.

But LAX definitely serves the international needs for most of the IE.

A lot of the Midwest got wrecked by airline consolidation in the 1980s and 1990s, including Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Saint Louis.

Cleveland actually had Continental Airlines flights to London from 1999 to 2010. But that was destroyed due to the Great Recession. And then when demand picked back up, Continental had folded into United and the Cleveland hub was dissolved.

They had flights to Paris in 2009 to 2010 (again a Continental experiment ended by merger/recession).

They even had Icelandair AND Wow Air flights to Reykjavik from 2018-2019. But both overexpanded in the U.S. (I remember 2018 was the "year of Iceland" since $99 fares were all over the news) and had to quickly pull back.

I agree that Cleveland not having a flight to Europe makes no sense. It's not just the metro area, but the entire CSA (3.6 million) that flies out of Cleveland. And now that Youngstown Airport is empty, that's another 650,000 people that split between Cleveland and Pittsburgh airports (it's 1hr from each).

A 4 million person market is definitely enough to accommodate at least a London flight.

U.S. METROS WITH FLIGHTS TO ASIA

Here is the same list but for Asian cities. These are the American cities with non-stop direct flights to Asia:

1. Atlanta
2. Boston
3. Chicago
4. Dallas
5. Dededo (aka Guam)
6. Denver
7. Detroit
8. Hilo
9. Honolulu
10. Houston
11. Las Vegas
12. Los Angeles
13. Minneapolis
14. New York
15. Portland
16. Riverside
17. Saipan
18. San Diego
19. San Francisco
20. San Jose
21. Seattle
22. Washington

Pretty barren, and quite a few head-scratching omissions, like Miami, Philadelphia, and Phoenix.

Newark has direct flights to Beijing, Delhi, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, so I assume Philadelphians well utilize that airport (1.5 hour drive away). But Miami and Phoenix don't make much sense, the former given its tourism draw and Phoenix due to the large Asian populations in the West (though I suppose Phoenix isn't as Asian as California).

Interesting list - It's a little silly to look at Transatlantic fights from a West Coast city like Riverside or Sacramento. Anyhoo, I wouldn't think the demand would be there for St. Louis to Frankfurt. Really odd timing too as Transatlantic flights are half empty and COVID restrictions are coming back in to place.

I can see Miami getting one soon. No shortage of flights to central and South America, but you would think there would be enough demand to Tokyo or Tel Aviv at least. Newark really sucks for international travel, with high airport fees to boot.

Distance may be a factor for Miami. Atlanta to Tokyo is already over 14 hours, and a Miami to Tokyo flight would pass pretty much due over Atlanta, but be pushing the 16 hour mark. And that's for Tokyo, the closest major Asian city to the East Coast (due to the polar route).

Also, I never realized just how linked Guam/Northern Mariana Islands were to Asian cities. They've both become major Asian tourist hubs, since Asians go there to experience "American culture."

Guam:

1. Busan
2. Cheongju
3. Daegu
4. Fukuoka
5. Gwangju
6. Manila
7. Nagoya
8. Osaka
9. Seoul
10. Taipei
11. Tokyo

Northern Mariana Islands

1. Beijing
2. Busan
3. Hangzhou
4. Hong Kong
5. Seoul

Apparently, the Japanese prefer Guam to the Marianas, which means Chinese prefer the Marianas to Guam :haha:

...and Honolulu:

1. Fukuoka
2. Kuala Lumpur
3. Manila
4. Nagoya
5. Osaka
6. Sapporo
7. Seoul
8. Taipei
9. Tokyo

Honolulu-Tokyo is so lucrative, it's served by 5 airlines: All Nippon (from both Haneda and Narita), Delta (Haneda), Hawaiian (both Haneda/Narita), Japan Airlines (both Haneda/Narita), Zipair (Narita). That's the same number of airlines that compete in the Heathrow-Kennedy route market. Crazy!

They surely have a demand for that. Brazilian international traffic is heavily centered in São Paulo and the other smaller capitals usually pick Lisbon as their European destination (Porto Alegre, Campinas, Belo Horizonte and the Northeast ones).

Cleveland is a massive market on its own and London is the busiest airport system in the world, with connections to any place.

I checked some of those smaller U.S. non-hub markets with non-stops to Europe on the list, and it appears that many of them are served by British Airways (examples: Nashville and Cincinnati). That makes sense because U.S. airlines have incentive to funnel international traffic through their major hubs. OTOH, British Airways doesn't serve some lower tier 1 (or high tier 2) cities with major hubs like Detroit and Minneapolis. So maybe Lufthansa is starting to follow this strategy. If that's the case then I wouldn't be surprised to see Lufthansa eventually drop its Frankfurt-Detroit route.

I'm curious, which US cities have direct flights to sub-Saharan Africa? To the Middle East?

I know that NYC, DC, and Atlanta have non-stops to sub-Saharan Africa. A lot of cities have non-stop flights to the Middle East. Probably almost all of the airports with a major hub has a route to the Middle East.

San Francisco has flights to Istanbul,Tel Aviv, Doha, and Dubai.

Los Angeles has flights to Istanbul,Tel Aviv, Doha, Jeddah, Riyadh, and Dubai.

Neither have flights to sub-Saharan Africa. That's it for CA cities.

D.C. has a good amount:

1. Abu Dhabi - Etihad
2. Accra - United
3. Addis ​Ababa - Ethiopian Airlines
4. Amman - United
5. Cairo - Egyptair
6. Doha - Qatar Airways
7. Dubai - Emirates
8. Istanbul - Turkish Airlines
9. Jeddah - Saudia
10. Lagos - United
11. Riyadh - Saudia
12. Sal - Cabo Verde Airlines
13. Tel Aviv - El Al

Middle East

1. Atlanta
2. Boston
3. Chicago
4. Dallas
5. Detroit
6. Houston
7. Las Vegas
8. Los Angeles
9. Miami
10. New York
11. Orlando
12. Philadelphia
13. San Francisco
14. Seattle
15. Washington

Sub-Saharan Africa

1. Atlanta
2. Chicago
3. New York
4. Washington