Originally Posted by
beyondhere
CLE has CAK to it's corner, and CLE is also a smaller region than DTW, MSP or ATL. It isn't supporting even a TATL flight currently, so it's not analogous. Within UA's network, UA had ORD, EWR and IAD, so it might have been viewed as extraneous.
DEN: WN is huge there.
IAH: WN is at HOU and WN has dominance of intra Texas flows
ORD: AA and WN at MDW.
UA likely isn't charging hub captive fares in a market like ORD, the same way DL can in a market like DTW.
However, WN is large in ATL which is a DL mid con hub, and it's WN's 8th largest station.
http://swamedia.com/channels/Corpora...ct-sheet#top10
Still many UA nearby hubs are higher on that list. WN also doesn't aggregate OAK+SFO+SJC but I'm sure it's footprint from those 3 are greater than it's footprint in ATL.
WN might be pretty big in ATL, but not as much as AirTran was poised to be, or threatened to be.
Delta does indeed charge captive fares at DTW, but it lifts all boats a bit. DTW-SFO for example yes, is an expensive NS route, but it's also an expensive connecting route on UA and others. The premium you'll pay DL for the NS flight is about $150-$200 on average. And it's five flights a day to SFO, so is DL really cleaning up there? Is it enough to claim DL has such "massive advantages"?
On DTW-LAX route, DL doesn't have a full lock on the route, NK has one non-stop a day as well, and it does push prices down a bit. DL doesn't match NK on that flight, but it does drop it's price about a $100 on the one flight that is closest to NK's departure time.
Again though, is that enough? Doesn't UA have similar flights it charges and controls premiums from IAH? I'm sure they do, and if they don't; well then again...DL has a better strategy.