Originally Posted by
fedexflyer
In the Memphis paper today, they published the results of a recent analysis comparing Northwest's MEM flight schedule for this coming October with that of October 2007. The results would surprise those that insist Memphis will be cut first/hardest: While year over year capacity has been reduced six percent, frequencies have actually INCREASED two percent, and the number of destinations has increased as well. While I realize that implicit in those numbers is a shift toward smaller aircraft, I suspect much of that is simply a function of NWA retiring 757s and DC9s in favor of EMB175s and CRJ900s.
This is not surprising. NW needs to continue to operate the airline as if the merger will not happen, just in case it does not happen. Without MEM, NW would be ceding an enormous number of city pairs that just cannot be served meaningfully via DTW or MSP. Standalone NW probably needs MEM as a true hub. Merged DL/NW does not. I think the real question over whether MEM and CVG get completely dehubbed is the amount that the merged carrier shrinks. And we won't know that until after the merger.