To draw an analogy to employment, I think that Hartford might have been a victim of downsizing more than being fired for their own lack of merit.

Part of the restructuring budget was probably to cut back on the number of outsourced CRJs in the fleet. They negotiated with Skywest to cut back to twelve (eleven lines of flying plus a spare.) Now with that reduced CRJ flying, they can get more loads of passengers, or more “bang for their buck” out of 11 lines of CRJ flying by concentrating on shorter flights. That’s a simplified way to look at it, but I think it holds true. If they chose to keep BWI, BDL and RDU with only 11 lines of CRJ flying, they would have had to cut far more shorter flights to GRR, DSM, MSP, etc. Now if BDL were a total gold mine or exceptionally critical to their strategic plan to serve the MKE business community, they would have figured out a way to keep it. I don’t think it is that important, but on the other hand I don’t think it’s a doomed loser, either.

Funny…that brings back an aspect of the old outsourcing-the-RJ-flying debate. Had Midwest been able to acquire the 50-seat RJ’s as some wanted, they wouldn’t so easily be able to cut back the RJ flying as they are.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on BDL going. I have to dig some more about SAN going, including getting to understand the stats MOBflyer posts on a.net.