Originally Posted by
mattya9
How many of those gates are exclusively for DL though? Based on the information you provided it sounds like they only have exclusive/primary use of gates 7-10 and the others are common use gates. If that is the case, I can see AA requiring more gates for the increased operations and thus bumping everyone down the line (terminal) into other common use gates thus taking away availability for DL usage (and everyone else for that matter). Just a thought. I'll admit I'm a DL fanboy and want them to succeed no matter what. But until AUS builds that new satellite terminal gate space (and growth by any airline) will be hard to come by.
It's long been 'reported' around here and similar forums that DL has rights (or perhaps preferential rights) to those gates, though I don't think we've ever seen anything official so who knows what (if any) agreement DL has with AUS.
Gates 1-6 are common use although there aren't any generally many domestic airlines that need common use at that end most times of day (even in non-pandemic times). Jetblue appears to use Gate 6 as overflow from their main gate (Gate 12) a couple of times a day. Otherwise, Gates 1-6 seem to mainly be for international (BA if/when they return, LH if/when they return, AM, AC, WS, Norwegian who won't be returning) and perhaps Sun Country. Overall that's not a lot of daily flights in normal times. (It's possible HA may use one of those gates as well when they launch since they are using a 332). So, at least currently (again, even outside of the pandemic), there's is a good amount of slack in those gates for DL, if they have the rights to 'call dibs' on them.