Originally Posted by
TheBOSman
They could end up large enough at that point to perhaps attempt a mid-con hub, although I have no idea where. The largest middle-USA (which I'll define as west of Appalachians and east of the Rockies) airports that aren't currently a hub for another airline (I'll ignore anything WN focus city briefly), by passenger counts, are STL, HOU, BNA, AUS, and MCI. None of those are really obvious, and VX/B6 currently have little presence in them (none at all in STL or MCI, and BNA is only starting in May for B6). STL is well located and has the infrastructure built more than most, but would be a tough go with how much WN has increased at STL.
Yeah, it would be a tough go of things. ALL of those have WN presence, HOU's a "hub" where WN is even stronger than at STL, MCI, BNA and AUS are midsize cities where you're fighting with WN for a pretty small pie.
I would guess AUS would be "closest" to being a match for the VX/B6 target customer (millennial, urban, techie), and VX and B6 both serve it pretty well, even though the VX DAL-AUS service flopped miserably. They'd serve SFO, LGB, FLL, BOS, MCO, JFK. That's...something? If you added LAS, more intra-Texas service*, and, say, ORD and flipped the LGB service over to LAX** that would probably be a reasonable midcon focus city to build on.
*If they want to be a big dog like WN in a Texas city, they will have to fight with WN for some intra-Texas shorthaul. The problem was DAL has such limited slots for VX that they were gonna lose that one to WN unless they cannibalized other destinations. AUS wouldn't have that problem as much if they serve IAH/HOU/SAT as well.
**I suspect that the merged B6/VX entity would fold up LGB for LAX. There's just no reason to run two hubs less than 20 miles from each other, especially one that is as facility limited as LGB is compared to LAX.