Originally Posted by
fly18725
Umm, I don't think anyone was talking about the economics of the city or MSA, but rather the economics of the hub itself.
Specifically, SFO generates more, higher yielding O&D traffic. Therefore, it is economically superior as a hub to other hubs that have less O&D traffic or lower yields, e.g. DTW. Therefore, an airline would be stupid to not "trade" a hub in DTW for a hub in SFO. Of course, this is a dumb argument (that is becoming circular) because we're past a point where airlines would trade hubs.
The original poster made a claim about the cities themselves not the airports, so that's what I addressed.
I am curious, do you have any data to show that SFO as a hub generates higher margins than DTW as a hub? Not trying to be sarcastic, genuinely curious. The source I have, which is slightly out of date shows otherwise in terms of O&D yield.
