Originally Posted by
perseus11
If you force a routing (PIT-JFK-LHR), which is not available as a thru fare, you're going to have to pay for each segment separately. Why would you do that rather than accepting one of the plethora of thru fare routings offered : PIT-PHL/ORD/CLT-LHR ??
The statement : " AA is definitely feeling the squeeze at PHL operationally after rebanking" is a personal and refutable opinion.
If there were "severe infrastructure limitations" at PHL, AA would have abandoned it, not bulked it up into its now "main TATL Hub".
Delaying the departure of a flight that would arrive earlier than scheduled and tie up a gate that was scheduled for an on-time arrival is very typical at most Hubs, such as JFK, LAX, ORD, etc.. It's called schedule/gate management.
PIT-JFK-LHR is definitely a through fare... You can see in the fare construction of a random search I just did that the fare doesn’t break for PIT-LON with a JFK connection.
PIT AA X/NYC AA LON 370.00QKW8C1B5 AA X/NYC AA PIT 320.00
For hub rebanking - sometimes how things look on a spreadsheet does not always translate in reality. Rebanking absolutely helps drive down costs by a considerable margin.... When everything goes according to plan. When you pad your flight times too much (i.e. PIT-PHL has 30-40 minutes of padding) it gives a false sense when calculating ground resources causing revolving operational challenges on the ground when something skips a beat (ground crew, gate agent, caterering, gate space, etc.). Once one link shakes the domino effect begins.
Rebanking is better than rolling hubs no doubt, but the question is how aggressive should you be with rebanking? I think this is the challenge AA has right now as I can tell from my experience that AA is deep in the aggressive terriority (missed connections, mis-catering, gate agents struggling, lack of gate space, etc.). AA’s operational reliability is not very good and their financial results aren’t showing the benefits that I think they are hoping to achieve from tightening up the hub banks.