Originally Posted by
Geordie405
So do you consider both PHL and PHX to be secondary? They are in your list but I'd consider both to be transfer hubs. I can understand BWI (as an example) as being a possible secondary destination as it's within spitting distance of other large airports. For Phoenix the only flights to the UK / Europe are operated by BA and AA, and the latter has said they are only looking to resume service from 7th October. I can't see why BA wouldn't consider flying to PHX once they are able to.
From PHL the announcement from AA was that flights would resume on 4th June - so does that mean BA shouldn't consider flying to / from PHL simply because it's now served by AA?
If BA is the only airline operating to a particular destination then it may be more advantageous to them to resume service there than to consider it "secondary" and potentially lose that route to another carrier. If you look at the west coast of the US, you could potentially argue that you could just fly to SFO on the basis that everywhere else is within a couple of hours of San Francisco. No need for flights to Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, Portland, Vancouver, Las Vegas or Phoenix!
No, PHL and PHX are AA hubs and not secondary; as you mentioned, Baltimore would be a secondary destination. If I'm not wrong, they are the only European carrier alongside Condor at BWI. For the Bay Area, San Jose would be the secondary destination. For Southern California, San Diego would be the secondary destination.
Los Angeles and SFO are major airports that there is excessive demand compared to other airports so we could not describe them as secondary.
And yes, IMO, San Jose, Portland, San Diego, Baltimore, Nashville, New Orleans, Austin, Charleston, Tampa, and Calgary would be shelved for a while.
From the AA announcement, yes, they plan to resume PHL on 4 June but for a while, where the demand allows, AA would be the only one operating that route. It would not make sense for BA to operate the route at the same time as AA as there would be no demand for the second flight. IMO, BA would resume Dallas and Miami before Philadelphia and they would resume Philadelphia. By the way, still, we have no information when the US approved screening point restriction would be lifted so I pretty doubt that AA would be able to resume PHL-LHR on 4 June; we'll all see.
By the way, until AA resumes PHX-LHR, it may be feasible for BA to resume the route; however, the only European competitor is Condor so they might also like to add another ORD, JFK, DFW flight instead and connect these passengers to American.