US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - how do you sell a hub?

When US says "selling a hub" I can only guess that it means it is willing to part with its gate leases.....What else is there to a hub that you dont rent from the airport authority?

are there carriers that badly want in to pit, clt or phl? But none of those are slot controlled???

Help me understand this please.....

A perfect example of this would be how US Airways got their present presence at LGA. Their current terminal was originally being built for EA and CO. EA went on strike, and CO retreated to their hub at EWR. US bought the terminal, still under construction, and slots. Many of their current slots at DCA came from Air Florida and Eastern filing for Ch. 11 and eventually ceasing operations.

However, slots only apply to DCA and LGA these days. Even their international route authorities are worthless.

There are also other facilities, such as aircraft hangars, catering facilities, traning centers, etc that can also be sold as part of a hub sale.

In US' case, the only things of any value are the slots at DCA and LGA, and the gate leases at DCA. I believe that CO still actually owns the terminal at LGA, and US simply leases it from them.

The catch, of course, is that the slots at DCA and LGA and the gates at DCA are in hock to the ATSB to back the loan guarantee. Ergo, US presumably cannot sell them, or cannot sell them without taking that money and using it to turn around and pay down the ATSB backed loans.

US might own some/all of the gates, if not the entire terminal at BOS. That might have some value.

The problem with "selling" assets in either PHL, CLT, or PIT is that any other airline can simply wait for US to fold and then get whatever they desire.

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Don't feed the trolls.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by ClueByFour:
The problem with "selling" assets in either PHL, CLT, or PIT is that any other airline can simply wait for US to fold and then get whatever they desire.</font>

While this is technically true, some airline may find an advantage to buying all of the gate leases in PHL or CLT (not in PIT because any airline could go in right now and lease up to 50 gates if they wanted) and not facing competition in securing the gates or building their hub. This is less likely in CLT, though not totally impossible given CLT's benefits (location and cost), but in PHL I could certainly see this happening.