Originally Posted by
fly18725
I think the point was that it suddenly becomes practical and more cost effective for AA to add 1x daily flight from ORD to existing US stations after the merger, adding options for customers and increasing competition with United.
Absolutely, at the expense of some US flights. They are not going to saturate the market to have more options/frequencies.
So, if ALB has 10x flights a day to PHL/DCA/CLT, expect to see something like ORD-ALB go to 2x a day and PHL/CLT/DCA-ALB lose 2-3 frequencies. It will be at least a year before we see any of that. A lot of stations that already have AA/US service will see a reduction in service as duplications are eliminated [I.E. customers going to the west coast can go via ORD/DFW, no need for the extra PHL/CLT flights. Same with some AA markets as some current AA customers traveling along the east coast can utilize PHL/CLT, so less capacity is needed via ORD].
They won't add more capacity on top of what is already in the market.