I couldn't agree with this more. MEM (and CVG) are the easiest places ever to make a connection. Their staffs are consistently the friendliest I see, and I've never had shena raise her ugly face in MEM (while it seems to happen 50% of the time in ATL). I know so many people who took AMS-MEM (and who take CVG-CDG) precisely because of how easy they are to transit (time, after all, is worth a lot to BIS travelers). As I noted above, the flight operated successfully for 17 years! I can believe that with all the cuts it is less profitable now, because if no one can connect to or from it, then of course there will be no one on it.

DL added another AMS-ATL frequency. There's no way there is so much O&D traffic between ATL and AMS to need the frequencies they have. They need the flight because of connecting passengers, just as the case was at MEM. But rather than stick with an airport with lower costs than ATL, a friendlier ground staff, less over-crowding (how often when landing in ATL do you have to wait for a gate? For me that is becoming more common than not) and fewer delays, DL decided to route all of those connections to ATL and cut the AMS-MEM flight.

Once again, as far as I can tell, the entire strategy here is just plain ridiculous.