Originally Posted by
TWA Fan 1
9. Which Hubs Will Gain/Suffer?[/B] ORD and IAH are pretty solid no matter what. But you have to wonder if EWR will see flight volume go down, not so much because it isn't doing well financially, but because the facility is totally maxed out. And what of DEN, CLE, SFO?
I'm going to actually say IAH is going to suffer some minor shrinkage over time.
Reason being is that CO is funneling quite a bit of traffic through IAH, a lot of which is inefficient given IAH's location. It's great for Latin America and Texas, and such, but not so great for coast-to-coast where I think a lot of traffic lies.
Obviously UA is doing the same via ORD or IAD (to Florida, Texas, Caribbean etc.), which would be better served via IAH, but UA is much weaker in those regions, so the volume by which CO is having people fly the V-shaped pattern across the country is disproportionately higher, and much of that coast-to-coast traffic on CO will be routed through DEN or ORD in the future just because it's quicker and more efficient.