10 replies to this topic

[Andy-J]

Will BA come to Charlotte after the Aa/US merger? I believe they go to PHL and PHX almost daily now.
Also, will they lose the 2 CRJ flights by AC and/or the A332/A342 LH daily too?

Slightly concerned about the international status of my airport,
That guy who used to do Virgin

[lake]

Unfortunately, I see CLT being the Cincinnati of the hub. It can't sustain service based off of O&D (like PHX) and it's use for US Airways is covered by JFK, DFW, & MIA. It will probably be chopped down to 200-300 daily flights(currently 655), meaning it will lose a good 50% of it's flights.  Most likely, it will lose LH and at least 1 of the 2 AC jets. As for OW, I could see BA adding a 3-5 times weekly flight. I could also see Qatar airlines doing the same.

[Andy-J]

DOH would be totally freaking awesome to see from CLT. We have very little OD here but AA keeps saying they need a Southeast hub and Miami absolutely blows when it comes to connections (a friend flew CHS-MIA-BDL for a wedding and said it sucked to get blown back 2 hrs, connect and then a 3hr flight.) Love to see more OW activity and maybe some more international flights (and airlines!) Too bad it wont happen...

[lake]

DOH would be totally freaking awesome to see from CLT. We have very little OD here but AA keeps saying they need a Southeast hub and Miami absolutely blows when it comes to connections (a friend flew CHS-MIA-BDL for a wedding and said it sucked to get blown back 2 hrs, connect and then a 3hr flight.) Love to see more OW activity and maybe some more international flights (and airlines!) Too bad it wont happen...

The problem with CLT, is that it really has no function in the new system. For example, I often use it to fly routes like SMF-JAX (via PHX, CLT.) However, I can now fly SMF-DFW-JAX. Eliminates the need for CLT. Another example would be Northeast-Caribbean. Now, they can either fly nonstop out of JFK or PHL, or have more connection opportunities in MIA. In all honesty, AA could care less about how bad MIA is for connections... it is more logical for Latin America (one of CLT's main missions.) Therefore, it will be used more.

[Andy-J]

The problem with CLT, is that it really has no function in the new system. For example, I often use it to fly routes like SMF-JAX (via PHX, CLT.) However, I can now fly SMF-DFW-JAX. Eliminates the need for CLT. Another example would be Northeast-Caribbean. Now, they can either fly nonstop out of JFK or PHL, or have more connection opportunities in MIA. In all honesty, AA could care less about how bad MIA is for connections... it is more logical for Latin America (one of CLT's main missions.) Therefore, it will be used more.

Yep...CLT is probably ****ed

[txaggie]

Unfortunately, I see CLT being the Cincinnati of the hub. It can't sustain service based off of O&D (like PHX) and it's use for US Airways is covered by JFK, DFW, & MIA. It will probably be chopped down to 200-300 daily flights(currently 655), meaning it will lose a good 50% of it's flights.  Most likely, it will lose LH and at least 1 of the 2 AC jets. As for OW, I could see BA adding a 3-5 times weekly flight. I could also see Qatar airlines doing the same.

 

You're forgetting that PHL is US AIrways, but I cannot see any scenario in which that happens to CLT. MIA is O&D and in an awful location for non-Caribbean and Latin American connecting traffic. Perhaps you'll see cutbacks, but Miami is not in a position to takeover for CLT. CLT may lose some traffic headed internationally to the south, and see some reductions from domestic markets because of that, but MIA is limited in what it can serve.

 

JFK is an O&D operation for American, and they don't really have the room to make it anything else. It will be interesting to see how the JFK_PHL dynamic plays out, though

 

Cincy got beat up because it didn't really offer anything that ATL and Detroit could do, and Memphis was Northwest's attempt to compete with Cincy, Atlanta, and DFW, so it got pulled back, too. CVG and MEM fill in the gaps between Atlanta and Detroit and compete a little with DFW. 

 

There isn't that kind of cannibalism between CLT and the other hubs, so I really feel as if they are mostly safe. But only time will tell...

[txaggie]

AA could care less about how bad MIA is for connections... it is more logical for Latin America (one of CLT's main missions.) Therefore, it will be used more.

 

*Could *not* care less, but that's not going to be their (its actually going to be a lot of US AIrways management) attitude. You don't simply not care about connecting the southeast United States and the northeast United States- AA didn't fight to make Raleigh/Durham work because they didn't care.

 

p.s. Regarding all of their hubs, there are some in the industry that believe AA-US are taking this merger a little different than the past two and will look to keep their system pretty much intact.

 

It could be PHX that needs to worry the most considering its location between DFW and LAX although perhaps that will signify a retreat east and that may not be something they want to do.

[lake]

*Could *not* care less, but that's not going to be their (its actually going to be a lot of US AIrways management) attitude. You don't simply not care about connecting the southeast United States and the northeast United States- AA didn't fight to make Raleigh/Durham work because they didn't care.

 

p.s. Regarding all of their hubs, there are some in the industry that believe AA-US are taking this merger a little different than the past two and will look to keep their system pretty much intact.

 

It could be PHX that needs to worry the most considering its location between DFW and LAX although perhaps that will signify a retreat east and that may not be something they want to do.

What PHX has on it's side is that you can only get so big over at LAX. As for caring less, I meant the functionality of the hub itself as that's what I thought he commented on. The problem with you saying that the Northeast is O & D based, is that a good 30% of CLT's passengers come from the Northeast. Cut them out (because of DCA/PHL/JFK/even ORD to an extent) and you have very little people from the Northeast flying in therefore affecting the loads on connecting flights. The same could be said with the west. In fact, out of the Top 10 busiest routes out of CLT, 4 of them are from the Northeast (replaceable) and 3 of them are current AA or US hubs. That leaves Atlanta, Houston (DFW can do that job 10x better), and Orlando (MIA works just fine.)

[mxax-ai]

While I agree that CLT might see some cutbacks due to overlapping markets with DFW, MIA and PHL (even ORD to some extent), it does have some advantages for certain markets, unless AA/US want to fly RJ on trips of several hours or drop the destinations completely. Florida airports should have acceptable backtracking times from MIA, yet it is suboptimal. Philadelphia could do the job of connecting pax from the northeast and Europe to the east and southeast; alas, PHL and the whole New York airspace is quite restricted. DFW would be pretty good for flights from the west to the US east coast, but some routes could get rather long and for connections fron Europe and the NE it is rather bad.

Cincinnati, while serving a similar purpose, was/is a different thing: CVG had a big hub 500 miles to the north and another very big hub 500 miles directly to the south. Thus, travellers from the north, northeast and Europe had excellent connections via DTW, needing no or very little backtracking, while travellers from the south could easily be routed via ATL. Travellers directly from the East or West to the other side could take a route via these hubs too as CVG did not feature much difference in an east-west direction. MEM, with ATL in its neck, never had a chance with DL.

[txaggie]

What PHX has on it's side is that you can only get so big over at LAX. As for caring less, I meant the functionality of the hub itself as that's what I thought he commented on. The problem with you saying that the Northeast is O & D based, is that a good 30% of CLT's passengers come from the Northeast. Cut them out (because of DCA/PHL/JFK/even ORD to an extent) and you have very little people from the Northeast flying in therefore affecting the loads on connecting flights. The same could be said with the west. In fact, out of the Top 10 busiest routes out of CLT, 4 of them are from the Northeast (replaceable) and 3 of them are current AA or US hubs. That leaves Atlanta, Houston (DFW can do that job 10x better), and Orlando (MIA works just fine.)

 

US Airways has made the CLT-DCA-PHL dynamic work, so I think the question is how the two bookends at JFK and MIA effect the network.

 

American's operation at JFK is O&D based- sorry if I insinuated the northeast in its entirety is. AA at JFK is international traffic and a handful of primarily domestic trunk routes. I'm sure they may attempt to expand some, but I think it'd be focused on their O&D traffic- it'd be hella expensive and difficult, and probably impossible, to do anything massive. Delta is trying, but they're still somewhat limited and still heavy on the O&D traffic.

 

I think it would probably make more sense to keep the connections running through PHL and CLT. Its cheaper, its easier, they're more established. CLT in particular is the most established/the largest, the easiest to expand, etc... I'd find it strange if you break that apart at PHL and CLT to try to build the same thing in the arguably less favorable situation at JFK.

 

You break up CLT, and I'm sure Delta is seeing dollar signs, hearing cha-chings, and probably sniffing blood. They may try to further degrade CLT via pumping up ATL to an even larger operation than it currently is.

 

As for MIA, I can understand some of it- but its still kind of the same thing. Why pull back something that is working at CLT to move down to MIA and be in a less favorable location for many markets. I can definitely see MIA pulling some of CLT's Carribean and Latin American traffic and that leading to some further domestic cuts at CLT...but to lose half of their flights? Its just not what I think will happen, but I guess we'll see.

[pat95]

I can see BA flying their 787's or 777's into there I can also see Iberia doing seasonal service to Madrid or Barcelona. Maybe if we are lucky we will see Japan Airlines add service to Tokyo with a 787 and if we are really lucky Maybe Qatar will start service to Doha. I really would like to see LAN in charlotte but i doubt that would happen.

 

I think CLT will be just fine. So far AA has only cut one flight from CLT and added 3 new ones and also is upgrading the fleet on the CLT-DFW/ORD/MIA routes. I hope they bring back the CLT-HNL route when they get 787's but i doubt thats going to happen. Any how I'm not to worried about CLT cause JFK you can only get so big at, DCA they can not any more flights to i don't think unless they cut some more there MIA can't replace a good amount of destinations served by charlotte if you think about it and with PHL well it can't really takes CLT's place either