Originally Posted by
gooselee
You're surprised because your logic and assumptions are faulty.
More people wanting to go to the city center = more people wanting to fly into the airport that actually serves it.
Remember that your original argument about metro Boston was to close BOS altogether and service the city center via PVD and MHT only. Similar to how you said that DCA and LGA should be shuttered and JFK de-hubbed...
WHOA... I never said BOS should be closed. I said that WN shouldn't have gone there because it's expensive and domestic traffic is just as easily served out of PVD and MHT. WN did make inroads into the metro Boston market without BOS for quite a while before they went into BOS (due to AirTran?).
I did say DCA should be completely shut down once the silver line to Dulles is finished, and I stand by that. It should be turned into green space, with a walking/running/biking trail and other recreational activities. Silver Airlines at Dulles should go bye-bye completely. United is a really tough one, as both IAD and EWR should be de-hubbed, but that would leave them with nothing in the eastern US.
I did NOT say LGA should be shut down, rather that DL should de-hub from JFK, get rid of their mini jets, and consolidate their LGA operations to JFK. LGA would still be there for WN, Frontier, and others, and in fact, I believe that it should be connected to the subway system via an AirTrain. However, their current plan makes no sense, it should go down the other direction, but that's another story for another day.
Without the mini jets, DL would have TONS of capacity to hub at MSP, DTW, and ATL, without needing JFK, except for service TO JFK.
ORD needs to be de-clogged by at least eliminating the mini jets. It really should be de-hubbed, as it's a congested nightmare that consistently tops the list for delays, but American doesn't have readily available alternatives like DL does. And WN should stay at MDW. One option for American would be to move back into US Airways' hub at PIT, which is an amazing airport, and has a ton of unutilized capacity.
Looking at all that, I wonder if eliminating mini jets would allow DL to consolidate to either DTW or MSP, and leave the other open for American or United, since both have incredible capacity, but aren't as big of destinations as ORD.
Meanwhile, MDW has some serious people congestion, but far less plane congestion, which is all that really matters, showing the efficiency of the Southwest model. It's at 21M a year, and that's just going to keep going up.