Originally Posted by
GUWonder
Wasn't the pre-Parker US heavily banked into PHL and CLT as transit hubs for US's international service, with NYC on its backburner but for the exception of the US Shuttle and some domestic service to NYC/LGA? And yet US seemed to go from being financially on the path of the dodo to being on the path of the dodo to being on the path of the dodo using a strategy that Parker's AA seems to have bought into hook, line and sinker. The difference this time is that the AA has the benefit of being one of the US3 cartel industry kingpins in what is a much more oligopolistic market than before. But for how much longer can that work to the advantage of AA management?
Perhaps Parker read too much about how it's not worth being in a market if you can't be number 1 or 2 (or perhaps not even 3)? Given what he's done to ORD too, it seems he doesn't want to even suffer being number 2. And yet his airline is probably not deserving of more than a 3rd place finish when placed against DL and UA.
I've said this over and over, and I guess I'll say it again: JFK is a crappy place, geographically, to make a domestic connection to/from most of the eastern US, and that seriously impacts its usefulness as a place to make international connections. People who are flying between coastal cities, or between coastal and near-midwest cities, simply are not going to want a connection in JFK because it's too far out of their way. And that impacts the availability of inbound and outbound domestic flights connecting to/from international, because running a bunch of half-empty planes in and out of JFK just to make it a "real" connecting TATL hub is not a smart move. So JFK is focused O&D, which means a different pattern and amount of traffic; CLT is the east-coast domestic connecting hub, and PHL is the TATL connecting hub, and they are much better suited to those roles than JFK ever could be.
(DL has to make a go of it at JFK because they don't have a lot of other options -- cue the "you can get there, but you have to connect in Atlanta" jokes; UA has a sizable operation at EWR, but also has IAD as a more conveniently-placed east-coast hub)