Originally Posted by
minnyfly
What is an MSP thing is that the loss at NRT has not been supplemented by new flights to other destinations. So you're flying MSP-Asia, you've lost almost half of your available seats from your home base.
And not just MSP being your home base, but if your home base is only (or primarily) served by flights from MSP. Or you just prefer transiting MSP over ATL or other hubs.
Capacity discipline is a great theory, but hard to support when DL system-wide has only 0.4% fewer available seat-miles in 2012 vs. 2010. Compare that to MSP where DL has 8.9% fewer available seat-miles in 2012 vs. 2010. ATL, for comparison, has 1.2% more available seat miles in 2012 vs. 2010. DTW has 7.1% more available seat-miles in 2012 vs. 2010.
Capacity has been reduced slightly system-wide (or shifted to regional carriers or codeshares), but MSP has taken a significant hit in capacity compared to other hubs or the overall system.