Originally Posted by
ashill
I thought rebanking (ie moving from more banks to fewer larger ones or moving from a rolling hub to a banked hub) generally
drives up costs because you have to staff for the peak and then pay employees to be idle between banks. It's going for revenue because customers (including me) as well as, eg, Google Flights's "best flights" algorithm often sort by (or at least consider) total travel time when searching for flights, so efficient connections win. Those shorter connections and congestion certainly introduce operational challenges, and reducing those can be a cost savings, but I don't think the operational cost savings outweigh the staffing cost increases.
Like a lot of things today it probably looks good on an Excel Spreadsheet which can't take into account variables. The unseasoned flyer (not to mention even some seasoned flyers) probably thinks an hour is more than sufficient for a one hour connection to SA. The only such connection of the night. Then they miss the flight and either paying for a hotel room or sleep in the airport. MIA at night looks like a hotel because of all the flyers stranded for which AA can claim "not our responsibility you missed your connection." I assume being able to get another flight out of each a/c outweighs the additional labor costs. As far as the paxs, let's say they're not the consideration they once were.