Originally Posted by
kc1174
Was looking for details on CLT LH fleet improvements and found this thread.
BA used to fly into CLT with 772s, and Lufthansa have the A350 now to MUC, so aside from limited gate space, I can see no reason why AA aren’t (or can’t) providing better planes when the A333s are finally put out of their misery.
Runway length isn’t an issue. 18C/36C at 3048m is just about ok for an A380, but not by much (2900m requirement at max take off weight).
There's nothing wrong with the A330-300. The runway length is not an issue either. None of the US carriers have any plans to add an A380 to their fleet, so it's unlikely CLT will see any of those. The issue is that CLT is not positioned to be any kind of big international hub. PHL is the basket where all the eggs are going. Just look at the exPHL routes that have been "upgraded" to a 787 and new routes that have been added there. CLT has been getting overflow routes to large Europe cities to supplement PHL during the busy travel months, but not much more.
I thought that the LH daily MUC nonstop would end after LUS/AA left Star Alliance. Guess I was wrong about that, and the business community in the region was able to keep it going. If GSP had the capacity to handle that flight, it would.