I recently noticed that, effective this Thursday, February 14, UA is making a change to the Denver hub's bank structure. The airline is basically swapping it's major eastbound and westbound banks in the morning.

Currently, the 8:30 a.m. (arrival) to 9:45 a.m. (departure) bank is a westward flow, while the 10:00 a.m. (arrival) to 11:15 a.m. (departure) bank is an eastward flow. These two directional banks get swapped starting Thursday... which marks a return to to the way things were prior to last year's big rebanking effort. As far as I can tell, no other banks later in the day are affected by this week's change.

The major impacts of this switch:

1) Early morning departures to DEN from the west coast, which had been in the reasonable 6:30 to 7:00 a.m. time frame this past year, revert back to the 5:15 to 5:45 a.m. departure time frame later this week.

2) It won't be as easy for eastern US residents to arrive on the west coast prior to Noon when connecting through DEN, since the 9:45 a.m. westward bank will become an 11:15 a.m. westward bank.

Any insight into the reasoning behind this shift?