Originally Posted by
SJC ORD LDR
I agree. I think DL is the only legacy to serve MDW and the only airline that serves both ORD and MDW. When I flew to Chicago on a regular basis, it was nice to have a shorter L ride into downtown Chicago from MDW.
What's going on in Dallas with DAL seems to be out of the Chicago political playbook.
Delta seems more open about servicing alternate airports where it doesn't have the hub. In Chicago make sense for it to be in both MDW and ORD. However, UA and AA have hubs in ORD so it doesn't make sense for them to be in MDW. US was also a Star Alliance partner prior to AA merger, so it made more sense to keep all capacity at ORD.
Originally Posted by
hazelrah
In the greater competitive landscape, IMO we don't need more service from Delta to Delta hubs from DAL. We need more competitive service against legacies to places like MEM and MKE. MKE service got whacked from its loss of Midwest and then its loss of Frontier when Frontier skedaddled.
That is biased against Delta. When Delta offers more seats in a market, even if it's just to existing hubs, it does offer lower fares on certain connection routes and connects airports to a wider network than what a LCC will offer.
I think policy shouldn't be against Delta, and in favor solely for "low cost carriers".
Tying back to DAL, I do wonder if Delta will sue. It wasn't part of the compromise that artificially capped DAL to only 20 gates, excluding new entrants. DAL remains lower cost to operate than DFW and closer to downtown Dallas and some wealthy communities, that Delta will be in weaker position to compete. Perhaps it can get JetBlue, Frontier and some smaller carriers who aren't that tied down to DFW to join in such suit to repeal the DAL compromise.
However, Delta does have a large share of slots in LGA/JFK where others can't easily enter. I'm not sure if it's worthwhile for them to push for DAL access beyond a gate or two. A full repeal might work in Southwest's favor if DAL became open to international.
Probably Delta will work a deal with VX for a single gate of the two that VX has, and maybe VX's DCA slots, and VX will drop DAL-DCA and Delta could attain 1 DAL gate and 3-4 DCA slot pairs from VX. I don't think VX will last on the DAL-DCA route. Maybe Delta could then use the DCA slots for RDU-DCA instead of RDU-BWI.
It was oddly unfair that Delta wasn't permitted to bid for DCA slots, or even the fact that US/AA had to give up more slots than AA brought to the table, in favor of policy directed towards the low cost carriers. I think Southwest might have more DCA slot pairs than Delta does because of this now.