Originally Posted by
3Cforme
When was that, and do you have more details?
I don't recall comparisons of revenue passenger miles or available seat miles, but this shows seats for the summer '13 schedule on a typical weekday. (Pre-merger; no US)
Hub..........Seats......Flts.......Avg...Mainline. ..Express
ATL/DL....132300....1026.....129.0.....705.....321
DFW/AA....90500.....807.....112.1.....504.....303
CLT/US......68100.....655.....103.9.....286.....369
IAH/UA......58800......618.....95.1.....253.....365
ORD/UA.....56700.....659.....86.0 .....199.....460
MSP/DL.....49700.....479.....103.7.....195.....284
DTW/DL.....49300.....542.....91.0.....174.....368
MIA/AA......46000.....319.....144.0.....251.....68
EWR/UA....45800.....429....106.7.....203.....226
ORD/AA.....42700.....505.....84.5 .....169.....336
PHL/US......41000.....467.....87.7.....164.....303
MDW/WN...38800.....265....146.3
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-fo....main/5914878/
But why call it "UA territory"? Why would AA give up that much traffic? When you add up ORD/UA, ORD/AA, and MDW/WN, you see that Chicago has a massive amount of traffic. WN really has no room to grow at MDW and is likely losing business travelers with their awful Evolve seating, painfully slow WiFi, and poor on-time schedule. UA has its own challenges.
While DFW and MIA are too far south to be good TATL gateways and JFK is going to be O&D focused, ORD stage lengths to European OW hubs are marginally longer than those from PHL:
http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=ORD+-+L...MAD,+PHL+-+MAD
Chicago has 2.5x the O&D traffic of Philly with a downtown that's booming - highest job creation and population growth of any city core in the US:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/city-...kets-us.html#b