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US Airways Launches Major Trans-Atlantic Expansion In Charlotte
Earlier this weekend, US Airways loaded a major trans-Atlantic expansion for its Charlotte Douglas hub into its schedules. It will be launching the following new routes from the Queen City, where US controls nearly 90% of the market. (airchive.com) More...
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The only candidate here to disappear would be PHL with delays, high cost and runway shortages. It has a major governance problem. Miami certainly is not on a downsize list. CLT has low cost, great access and good weather.
The problem of keeping too many hubs so close together (besides being ridiculously expensive) is that you divide your traffic over too many points and lose concentration of critical mass, efficiencies and synergies between the operations.
They'll end up having to send many passengers through more connections to get where they want to go. Thus takes more time, burns more fuel, uses more passenger seat miles of aircrafts, resulting in higher fares or lower profits than a company with fewer better distributed hubs.
PHL would definitely a goner, or at least a major downsize. Phoenix also seems like a redundant operation that would need to go or be reduced to near irrelevancy.
But that still leaves FOUR hubs on the east coast (with another two in mid-America. Assuming they eventually get rid of Philly, the remaining 6 hubs between Central and East is still overkill (especially in the east).
Plus, there's nothing north of LA and/or west of Chicago. If they also get rid of Phoenix (too close to DFW and LAX), only leaves LAX as the only west coast hub, with no operation at all in the northwest. Phoenix doesn't add geographic distribution. It just overlaps with and saps energy from the other nearby hubs and does nothing to create a foothold in the northwest, is no better than LAX as a transPacific gateway, and is not better positioned than DFW to get passengers out to/from the east and midwest.
US seems like a much worse fit for American than Alaska would be. US just seems desperate to find a dance partner, since all the other majors are already hitched, including more complementary operations. But everyone else brought more to the table than US Airways.
US Airways is the ugly girl, who kicked AA (the only major dance partner left) while they were down in the hopes of being noticed and hooking up with them under duress. Either it works, and they merge. Or it doesn't, and AA runs away, at the earliest opportunity, and keeps a deep seated hatred for one that kicked'em.
They'll end up having to send many passengers through more connections to get where they want to go. Thus takes more time, burns more fuel, uses more passenger seat miles of aircrafts, resulting in higher fares or lower profits than a company with fewer better distributed hubs.
PHL would definitely a goner, or at least a major downsize. Phoenix also seems like a redundant operation that would need to go or be reduced to near irrelevancy.
But that still leaves FOUR hubs on the east coast (with another two in mid-America. Assuming they eventually get rid of Philly, the remaining 6 hubs between Central and East is still overkill (especially in the east).
Plus, there's nothing north of LA and/or west of Chicago. If they also get rid of Phoenix (too close to DFW and LAX), only leaves LAX as the only west coast hub, with no operation at all in the northwest. Phoenix doesn't add geographic distribution. It just overlaps with and saps energy from the other nearby hubs and does nothing to create a foothold in the northwest, is no better than LAX as a transPacific gateway, and is not better positioned than DFW to get passengers out to/from the east and midwest.
US seems like a much worse fit for American than Alaska would be. US just seems desperate to find a dance partner, since all the other majors are already hitched, including more complementary operations. But everyone else brought more to the table than US Airways.
US Airways is the ugly girl, who kicked AA (the only major dance partner left) while they were down in the hopes of being noticed and hooking up with them under duress. Either it works, and they merge. Or it doesn't, and AA runs away, at the earliest opportunity, and keeps a deep seated hatred for one that kicked'em.
OTOH Philly has more O&D than CLT.
All that CLT has going is beautiful airport infrastructure, and low fees. But it wouldn't be the only well developed airport to be de-hubbed, leaving new terminals as ghost towns and new runways underused. If those low fees ever change, CLT would quickly find itself on the chopping block of an overbuilt combined entity with too many operations.
All that CLT has going is beautiful airport infrastructure, and low fees. But it wouldn't be the only well developed airport to be de-hubbed, leaving new terminals as ghost towns and new runways underused. If those low fees ever change, CLT would quickly find itself on the chopping block of an overbuilt combined entity with too many operations.
Personal opinion but I think this DOJ thing will push the merger date far enough out that AA can walk, and will, and if they do, the will remember. IMHO
I personal think PHL will suffer, if not go away, however things go down, just primarily for the reasons you mention. Departure delays aren't the fault of the Airport, it's all ATC congestion and trying to get something in the air, and you really can't fault ATC as it sits under the most congested airspace in the world, BUT you can't explain that to the ones that want to spend money. No amount of facility or infrastructure upgrade will change that. Probably the only reason it has held on so far is a fair amount of O&D traffic.
I guess my point is that adding another runway at PHL is not going to fix the ATC delays but their ruling class think they can add more cost to the airlines for another runway that will not help congestion in the region. That extra cost will drive out the airlines when an option is available...then those that made the decisions will be looking around for someone to blame.
yep
Can't offer any other evidence about the river runway except: http://www.fly.faa.gov/Information/east/zny/phl/frames.htm
Also possibly on the minds of US Airways managers, American may not be as upset at a potentially blocked merger, as US Airways would be.
After emerging from bankruptcy, having shed lots of debts and obligations, AA would be a formidable competitor (even without US). There may be a better merger partner (eg. Alaska) that may provide a better matching route network to better complement AA's network. AA-Alaska wouldn't create the worlds largest airline, but also wouldn't qualify for DOJ objection as easily as US-AA.
Alaska would provide more traffic into AA's current hubs, as well as provide a great hub operation in Seattle, that is a great launching point to Asia (a big growth market).
US mostly provides largely redundant hubs that duplicate AA's hubs that would divide traffic in a combined operation. US's Phoenix is between AA's Dallas and LAX operations. US's PHL is very close to AA's JFK hub. US's CLT hub provides a low cost option to AA's expensive MIA hub, but CLT provides little local O&D traffic of its' own. DCA would provide a market leading hub operation with a strong O&D traffic flow, but brings anti-trust scrutiny with it.
A combined operation would have 5 east coast hubs: MIA, CLT, DCA, PHL, and JFK. At least one or two hubs would need to eliminated or downsized to get the synergies of a combined network.
So US's continuing to strengthen their international flights at CLT is a good hedge against a blocked merger, and/or strengthens CLT's hub status if AA and US do merge.