6P&E

I think the factors that made it difficult for AA's RDU and BNA hubs are still present, although to be sure if US disappeared, that could change the game. The establishment of the AA MIA hub really prevented RDU from ever realizing its potential as it meant that AA did not need to develop RDU as a jumping off point for Caribbean and Latin American travel as travelers from the Northeast could bypass RDU and go via MIA. Otherwise, RDU became a connecting point mostly for low cost leisure markets to/from Florida. Probably not the type of niche AA ever wanted.

AA has only expanded its MIA hub in the past 15 years. I think MIA would have some of the same effect on an AA hub at CLT.

What AA learned from BNA is that a third east-west hub was not necessary, although they did not quite get that message in the first go-round; they tried it again in STL with their TW acquisition. And just recently threw in the towel... again.

Most major Southeast airports now have mainline AA or AE service through DFW, which provides connections to the west coast.

But I always thought BNA and RDU pirated connecting passengers from one another, although AA always denied it. So one AA Southeast hub may work where two didn't. Especially if US is no longer in the game.

emma dog

Yes... if you think about it, if you are in ATL and are flying on AA where do you go? West coast you get routed via DFW. Europe you go to ORD. Caribbean you go to MIA. Let's say CLT existed... what's that do for you? AE flights to CLT... and the other hubs already take care of your needs currently. What's CLT going to get you? Maybe some connections to the Northeast. That's about it.


BNA had a few issues and my memory is cloudy. There was the competing RDU issue. WN came in towards the end of BNA. Plus BNA and DFW were also competing to some extent. BNA also fed people into FL and that didn't make them a ton of money. Lots of issues.

STL and TWA... well... my understanding is that a chunk of the purchase was also to prevent them from being a zombie company and killing off profit. They were hopeful STL would work but WN just ate them up... and there was way too much duplication as you said with ORD and DFW.
I'm just not buying it with the lack of O&D traffic off of CLT. RDU and CLT are almost tied for O&D. The only Southeast airport that's near the top of the list is ATL. Otherwise, there just isn't a ton of Southeast O&D outside Florida. Again, a Southeast hub gets what??? Leisure traffic to Florida?

UA Fan

Are you really saying that DL has a better program than US?

6P&E

Interesting point and with Charlotte's banking industry where it is, not to mention the overall cool-down in the Charlotte economy, its O&D numbers won't be growing for a while.

MAH4546

How about making the following routings infinitely more convenient, keeping in mind that most Southeast stations, even large cities like GSO, do not have ORD service:

1) Intra-Southeast
2) Southeast-Northeast
3) Southeast-Midwest
3) Southeast-Northwest
4) Southeast-Europe

What it really does is this: it opens up new stations throughout the most populated region in the U.S. that are too thin from MIA/DFW/ORD (but, combined with the ability to support multiple flights to CLT, it becomes possible to add a 1x daily flight to a combination of MIA/DFW/ORD to further increase connectivity).

AVL and ILM have fairly sized local markets to Miami, for example, and could each handle a daily RJ. But AA isn't going to open either station for a daily RJ to Miami, there's not enough mass. But have a CLT hub, and that daily RJ to MIA (or DFW or ORD or a combination) suddenly works. It also allows AA to open up smaller stations in the Northeast for similar reasons. To be really viable in the region, where AA has shut down a plethora of stations, you need to offer great connectivity South. CLT does that.

emma dog

But if AA wanted a southeast hub, they could have expanded RDU and found a way to make it work.

If you think about it, there's no region in the country where ALL the majors compete with viable hubs. DL lacks Northeast and is weak in the west. UA doesn't do the South. AA doesn't do the South and is weak in the West. US doesn't do the Midwest and is poor on coastal West. Ironically, WN is the only airline that covers almost the entire US.

6P&E

and without the traditional hub and spoke system

6P&E

If memory serves me AE has had service between GSO and ORD in the recent past-- at least since the closure of RDU. For whatever reason, they did not keep it.

AA has started and stopped and then sometimes started again so much service in the Southeast in the past 25 years that I just don't take them as a serious contender in that region.

elitetraveler

BNA in my recollection wasn't designed to be an East-West hub; it was designed to compete against MEM and ATL connecting secondary cities in the SE with the NE and Midwest in sort of an X pattern.

6P&E

Your're right, in part or at least in the initial hub design, but in the last expansion (@1992) of the BNA hub before its complete shutdown in 1995, AA had vastly expanded its routes from BNA to the west, in part to provide a service from Southeastern cities that RDU did not provide. I think this was due to the fact that RDU and BNA had been duplicating services to some degree and AA wanted to try something different.

But what happened was that it put BNA up against DFW, which offered many more possibilities for travelers.

elitetraveler

I remember a BNA-LAX flight but don't recall much beyond that. AA really hasn't had much success going beyond ORD and DFW at the end of the day. SJC flopped; RDU they bought out an airline I can't even remember that was going to provide codeshare service before shutting it down, and SJU routes always seem to be based on AA getting financial guarantees from various Caribbean governments. And then of course there was STL, their third East-West hub. I personally enjoyed many flights through each of these hubs finding them preferable to the congestion and delays at DFW and ORD. I guess I am just not sure why AA thinks they can do better with US than it has in any of its other acquisitions and hub forays. Of course they did do a good job with the EA Latin American division and TW's LHR routes.

6P&E

In the early to mid 1990's I had access to AA's SABRE system, and I remember pulling up availability displays for city pairs where BNA could be a good connecting possibility, but where DFW or even ORD were also quite possible. It often seemed the DFW and ORD connections came up on the screen before perfectly viable BNA connections. It's almost as if AA wanted you to book DFW or ORD connections rather than BNA. And yet the smaller BNA was a much easier airport to deal with than the two mega hubs.

ByrdluvsAWACO

I really have doubts about AA buying US outright. First of all there's AA's high CASM compared to the other players out west. Second is the union mess going on within both airlines. AA doesn't need to deal with HPUS's problems right now.

The clear remedy to both of these issues is for AA to simply take controlling interest, but keep US as an independent airline. US'(LCC) stock value currently sits at $3.10 per share. With 161.1 million shares outstanding, AA would only need $250 million to gain a controlling interest in US. Im sure the dollar cost could be brought down with a stock-swap, and possible outside investors.

Outside of the ownership issue, there are some technical issues as well.


PHX - Despite all the talk of PHX vanishing, I doubt this will happen. Everyone seems to forget that there is plenty of western traffic that doesn't involve California. With the limited number of gates AA has at LAX, gates there should be utilized for O&D and intl connections. It would be a waste to route ABQ-SEA traffic through LAX instead of PHX.

LAX gate space - How would AA handle a flood of US flights feeding into T4? US currently operates out of T1 so transfers from there would be a nightmare. Then there's the LAX conspiracy theory that says all the majors want US to stay there and keep WN jammed up with limited gate space.

Fleets - US has an order for A350's and is moving towards an all Airbus fleet. While the differing fleet types don't pose any real problems, it does prevent some cost savings through maintenance alignment.

Overall, there would need to be a lot of realignment out west, but I think AA could make this work and gain a real presence out west without having to compete directly with WN.

eponymous_coward

AS isn't going to be interested in any alliance where they have to cough up their marketing relationship with DL (or, conversely, their codeshares with AA). They are perfectly fine with being a well-managed West Coast-based regional carrier with a modern fleet and a hybridized service model (in between an LCC and traditional carrier), that has a lot of good niches they can work in (AK, HI, SEA, PDX, CA, MX, QX regional).

If AA wants a closer relationship with AS, they can do what DL is doing (elite reciprocity,joint marketing, etc.). AA has made noises about this (according to AS executives who've talked at AS MVPG lunches), but nothing is concrete yet.

As for an AA/US meetup... still a trainwreck. Terrible CASM, and US does pretty much nothing for where AA is weakest (West Coast/TPAC, unless you consider PHX "West Coast").

AdamAuxier

Out of curiosity, and again I'm not as familiar with the airline industry as many of you, but why didn't a major like AA go after Frontier? They would gain an instant hub at Denver to compete with *A, gain gates in many important cities. Before Continental joined *A I often wondered why they didn't buy Frontier, since Frontier's existence seems to be owed to Continental de-hubbing DEN. On the subje