Originally Posted by
Quaker325
I think he must have been mugged here at some point or something.
I don't think there's been much optimism in this thread either. I think United will continue to downsize CLE to a "focus city" or whatever they want to call it. But CLE is not the middle of nowhere, nor will it be any time soon. Shrinking? No doubt. But it still is a major metropolitan area, still with many large, multinational corporations (most of which the general public has probably never heard of).
Now, I don't claim to be as knowledgeable as a lot of people on this board, but perhaps someone can clear something up for me. It's pretty well established that, for a hublet, CLE has a relatively high percentage of O&D passengers. And load factors out of CLE are pretty solid, correct? I, like everybody else, have no idea about profitability in CLE vs other cities, so it's entirely possible--even likely-- that shifting aircraft to other hubs will be more profitable for United. But what is the basis for the argument that CLE is overserved?
Load factors are somewhat irrelevant to the points being made about service reduction, as they are based on how well the AVAILABLE seats are being filled. And CO has been reducing the number of available seats to/from CLE for many years (like over 10). If CO flew one flight per day in and out of CLE on a 19 seat turboprop, and if all the seats were filled, the load would be 100%, but that wouldn't tell you much.
The question isn't whether CLE is "overserved" it's whether CLE can/will continue to be a hub airport and thus offer non-stop flights to cities like GRR. In other words, when someone in Charlotte needs to go to ROC or SYR, how likely are they to want to change planes in CLE vs. IAD or ORD? And how likely is UACO to even provide the option of changing planes in CLE (based on the price of operating in CLE and having CLE be a redundant option)? A hub airport needs to 1) have strong O&D traffic and 2) be a desirable place for other traffic to change planes. There has been some question about both points for some time; the second point has come into sharper focus recently given the likely redundancy of CLE compared to ORD and/or IAD. That's what this conversation all boils down to.
Having a hub at your local airport carries a certain amount of prestige, and it's also convenient to be able to fly to a lot of places without having to change planes. LOSING a hub is a bit of a black eye. Those are the issues of concern to the locals in Cleveland, just as they were to the locals in all the other nearby cities that have lost hubs (Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, St. Louis, etc.).
Southwest, etc. may backfill capacity if UACO reduces service to CLE, but it certainly won't replicate what CO offered. Southwest makes its money by cherry-picking passengers flying between major cities and by avoiding the costs and complications of serving smaller communities with RJs and turboprops; you will never be able to get to the South Bend, Indiana-type airports of the world on Southwest under their current business model. And even if you're flying between two major cities on Southwest, you may well have to change planes at least once (if not twice).
If UACO decides to reduce service to CLE, it may or may not try to defend what it determines are money-making opportunities at the airport. IIRC, CO used to fly 757s between BWI and CLE, probably as a defense against Southwest on that route (757 economics being what they are, they were probably able to make money even by matching Southwest's fares). But CO doesn't do that so much anymore; perhaps the demand for seats wasn't there, or perhaps they decided that the planes could be put to better use elsewhere. Airlines do capitulate once in a while; even though they had a loyal passenger base, UA pretty-much folded its JFK-Europe operations a couple years back in the face of competition from Delta (and CO at Newark), and UA also quit trying to compete with AA out of Miami after trying and failing to absorb Pan Am's Latin routes.
I don't think you'll see CLE reduced to "focus city" status. CO will either keep CO as a hub or turn it into a regular station. I always think of focus cities as what BOS is to US or what NW tried to build at DCA. In other words, cities where an airline does a ton of business but just can't take things to the next level because of some issue (slots, gates, costs, lack of planes, strength of competition, etc.). Oh sure, UACO may slap the focus city label on Hopkins at first as a way to ease the sting, but I think in 5 or 10 years, Cleveland will be just another dot on the UA route map.