Sad, perhaps, but it's just business. Nothing personal, just business.

I'm sure that discontinuing both routes to Brazil was an unexpected shock to many people in Charlotte, including many US Airways employees.

I'm certain that this is just the beginning. Look for other route cancellations, including most (if not all) of the seasonal TATL routes to secondary locations.

CLT will likely keep LHR, CDG, MAD and maybe FRA.

No longer does Doug Parker have an incentive to offer low-fare flights to Europe from CLT in competition with MIA and other hubs. When his only TATL gateways were PHL and CLT, he played that limited hand well. Now, he's got to run the TATL network to make a profit. With the much higher costs at pmUS since the merger, profits aren't going to come easy at CLT.

That reality wasn't lost on the Charlotte airport board when they recently voted to shelve the new international terminal in favor of some more domestic gates instead.