Originally Posted by
ubernostrum
If you're going to call yourself a "realist", you need to, you know, be realistic. Doug Parker doesn't know who you are or have a personal vendetta to make your flying experience miserable. So tell us what business motivation you think new AA would have to do these things.
If you think Parker's going to salt the earth at the pmUS hubs, well, tell us why you think the airline would do that, and why there would be a difference from other mergers. DL, for example, has done quite well out of keeping some of the former NW hubs -- what about the pmUS hubs do you think would motivate a slash-and-burn approach?
In other words, come up with some actual argument based on what a business would do, rather than the same old end-of-the-world grousing we've been subjected to since the merger announcement.
For example, here's a rundown for two pmUS hubs, as I see them.
CLT:
- Location: fills a gaping hole in the pmAA domestic network, offering a far more convenient location for east-coast business traffic to connect, and is a decent-sized metro area in its own right if that matters.
- Location: is in less-congested airspace than the major northeast US airports, and doesn't have the frequency of winter-weather issues.
- Location: is in ATL's backyard, offering the opportunity to compete realistically with DL (and WN's expanded operations, post-merger) in the US southeast.
- Operations: largest RJ farm in the country, run far more successfully than other major carriers' regional ops.
- International prospects: probably never a huge TATL hub, but has the ability to take some of the load off other hubs with capacity issues.
Based on that, I'd expect that new AA keeps CLT much as it currently is: a major domestic hub, with some international traffic.
Now, how about DCA?
- Significant O&D, extremely convenient to the major public and private-sector neighborhoods of the DC metro area.
- But is a cramped little airport stuck in a spot with no room to expand, in congested airspace.
- And has the perimeter restriction.
- And the merged airline has to divest there.
Which adds up to DCA probably keeping a lot of traffic, but likely not a true hub; connections that currently happen in DCA will probably move elsewhere, and it'll become more of an O&D focus.
See how easy it is to make real arguments for/against keeping hubs?
First, poor editing on my part. I was just trying to give a stylized (if tendentious) lay of the land, at least in terms of thinking on this matter. I meant to distinguish "realists" (which I don't claim to be) from the sort of grousers (or "losers") which I admit to being. You got that right!
Second, I hope you are right -- especially as regards PHL, which is what I care most about, since I live hereabouts and have enjoyed a rather amazing set of non-stops for the better part of two decades. I can still remember flying to PIT to fly to Europe.
However ... while there are all sorts of particulars and possibilities for each place, such as those you mention, I have no doubt (based on some pretty elementary economic theory and some great quotes from Parker in his charmingly frank moments) that the overall strategy of the new AA (like the other two oligopoly legacies) is to raise profit margins by shrinking supply of seats. From that I deduce that there will eventually be fewer seats, not more seats, from XXX to YYY. Although I admit that I don't know how that will work out for every GSO and every MCI; and I also admit that, arithmetically, you could shrink capacity while actually expanding (via the merger) the number of intermediate points WWW in the transit XXX-WWW-YYY; the standard business rationale of reducing fixed costs (which I would say trumps high-end products for increased customer satisfaction) will soon enough lead to a tipping point wherein one or more of the current US hubs starts looking more like PIT/STL/CVG/etc. All this was the logic that makes me think that more service from a new AA between, say, GSO and ORD is not in the cards unless service from GSO to CLT/PHL/DCA is cut; and that if that is the case, it will be part of a negative cascade for that or those particular hubs. Time will tell ....