Originally Posted by chasgoose

Exactly. Phoenix isn't a huge business center by any means, but it's not like some barren wasteland either. Freeport McMoran is one of the largest mining companies in the world to mention one. Also, even though it doesn't have the banking industry like CLT does, it's metro area is about twice the size and unlike CLT, people outside the PHX metro area have no real options for air travel outside of PHX (AZA doesn't really count given that its entirely leisure travelers and most flights from TUS connect through PHX anyways). Not to mention that PHX has a lot more O&D than CLT. Finally, even though PHX is a tourist destination, a lot of tourism comes from corporate conventions/retreats/meetings which are a different type of passenger.

I would compare PHX to DEN in terms of size/businesses/etc. If UA has managed to keep DEN going when its surrounded by SFO and LAX (with a similar amount of flights as AA) on one side and IAH and ORD (with almost 3x as many flights as AA) on the other, not to mention a rapidly expanding WN operation, certainly AA should be able to maintain the current level of service in PHX (which is a smaller operation than UA's in DEN) with only LAX (that can't really expand) on the west and ORD and DFW to the east.

I'm not saying PHX is going to expand or suddenly get a bunch of new flights and new international flights are pretty much a pipe dream (at most I could see an extra LHR flight, maybe a flight to SCL given the mining connections, and mayyyyybe a 787 to NRT on JL, but probably none of these are going to happen), but it's not going the way of STL/MEM/CVG/CLE. Shutting down PHX would essentially cede mountain west/west coast connections to UA and DL and cut needed service to a relatively large population.