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Stories by Brian DeRoy

CORRESPONDENT - CHARLESTON, SC A lifelong aviation fanatic and former TV news reporter, Brianâ€s unique flight experiences include an Air Force B-1 Bomber and Marine Osprey in addition to working for Boeing and the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

https://www.airlinereporter.com

Super Bowl = Big for Private Jets and MSP Hub Airline

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private jets at MSP

For those of you wondering why is there a Super Bowl post on an aviation website; just imagine teams, fans, and corporate fat cats taking the train or bus to the big game. Not likely, right?

When the NFL playoffs started, this native Minnesotan booked a ticket from Seattle to my hometown of Minneapolis in hopes of watching my Minnesota Vikings play in the big game. While the eventual Super Bowl champ Philadelphia Eagles crushed that dream in the NFC Championship game, the scene in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul showed off a Super Bowl of aviation.

If you’re curious why the Super Bowl was played in a city where the game time high was 6 degrees, the NFL told Minnesotans “if you want to keep the Vikings, pitch in for a $1 billion indoor stadium and we’ll give you the big game.”

A quick look at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport (MSP) and smaller feeder airports shows that a whole lot of big-buck fans travel in style.

MSP can handle 275 private planes, so much of the action was at the St. Paul Airport (Holman Field) where private jets were lined up all over the airfield. Two other reliever airports in the metro area also had brisk business

Consider in 1967, Super Bowl 1 did not even sell out the Los Angeles Coliseum. For the 2018 game, Minnesota’s Metropolitan Airports Commission estimated 1,000 private jets made the trip to the North Star state. (My jet was in the shop, so I flew commercial…)

My Thoughts: Boeing Leader Predicted Delta Airbus A321 Order – Could It Doom ”New 757?”

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The recent announcement by Delta Air Lines that it will be ordering 100 new Airbus A321neo jets could put a nail, or perhaps rivet, into the coffin of a 757 replacement.

I knew this Delta announcement was coming years ago when I was working for Boeing and had an insightful chat with a very high-ranking Boeing executive. The chat was not in a public forum, so I will not say who it was, but trust me – this person knew what he was talking about. He told me that he felt Delta may never by from Boeing again. He went on to talk about how Delta”s former CEO, Richard Anderson, and its current leadership, was pretty much married to the French conglomerate. 

Prior to Delta, Anderson made a couple of big Airbus purchases while heading Northwest Airlines. Delta”s entire A319, A320 and A330 fleet comes from Northwest. So what”s this have to do with the flirtation of a new 757?  Delta is far and above the biggest 757 user with 128 757s, a total that was boosted after the 2008 merger with Northwest Airlines. United’s the next-largest passenger carrier at 77 and American is third with 52. The aircraft is still popular in the US, but not as much overseas.