Originally Posted by
spin88
I for one don't bash UAL for dumping the CLE hub. Running a RJ hub, with ORD next door, made no sense. Frankly, I'm surprised it did not happen sooner.
This said, I will comment that Delta saw this coming, and went to a strategy of "upgaging" which allowed it to deal better with this issue while also reducing its CASM. AA did this to a lesser degree. Jeff? Well he planed to add only 17 E-175s per discussion in the 4Q 2013 quarterly results, 27 E-175s per the fleet plan (I don't know which is correct). Jeff now has the most capacity in RJs and no plan, other than shaving ASMs, to try to address it.
pmUA also became horribly over-reliant on shifting flying to express carriers before the merger -- partly because pmUA couldn't afford to continue paying for or repairing their planes. I was in the process of boarding two separate UA mainline flights (while they were in Chapter 13) when the planes were repo'd and the flights canceled. Was classy.
Then-United management did what it had to do to try to maintain coverage.
I don't think it's really about current management not thinking about these issues in advance. I think they've had their hands full trying to knock off other things, which for myriad reasons presented their own set of challenges.