Originally Posted by
ElmhurstNick
I'm curious about what DCA will end up looking like in the post-merger world. They'll have to give up some frequencies as part of the settlement, but DCA makes a pretty interesting focus city. There's a lot of CR2 nonsense, but there is also a fair amount of E170/175 traffic (Hartford, Manchester, Jacksonville, Nashville, Greensboro, and Minneapolis from just a quick scan).
My immediate selfish hope is that the CR7s on ORD-DCA get replaced by 175s.
One complication with DCA is that in addition to giving up slots, AA agreed not to use any of their "commuter" slots (which are for planes of <76 seats) for what DOT defines as large airports. Excluding airports in metro DC and beyond the DCA perimeter, those airports are:
ATL, ORD, DFW, JFK, CLT, IAH, MIA, MCO, EWR, MSP, DTW, PHL, BOS, LGA, FLL, MDW, TPA
What that means is that AA can't use anything smaller than a CR9 or E175 to fly from DCA to those cities. So ORD will definitely upsize to at least an E175; it has to.
On the US side, that seems to affect service to PHL (which is mostly CRJ or DH8 due to lack of real demand), DTW, and a single frequency to CLT will need to upgauge or be cut. For AA, it affects all their flights to JFK and a handful of ORD flights.