Originally Posted by golfingboy

I agree with all of the comments regarding how AA is treating PHL as if it's a captive airport charging a high premium to fly on AA out of PHL (whether is on a non-stop or connecting flight). PHL is not Denver or Minneapolis where one will have to travel several hours to the nearest major airport with a significant international operation, so charging a significant premium will result in losing some traffic to different area airports such as NYC or WAS.

I do not doubt that PHL by itself has $$$ and plenty of originating premium traffic, however, I do not think PHL sees the same amount of premium traffic on the destination side and that is a big piece of the equation. Corporate traffic - does PHL see the same amount of corporate/government traffic as say BOS, NYC, LA, WAS, Seattle, Chicago, etc.? I am sure there is a good chunk of corporate traffic but as significant? I doubt it.

Then the last piece of the equation - which is all AA's own doing IMO - is connecting traffic. AA has shrunk PHL's domestic options in favor of bolstering DFW/CLT and often from my observation with so little capacity on say SAN/SEA/DEN-PHL the front cabin gets booked up with domestic customers leaving no real capacity for premium TATL customers at competitive fares (i.e. domestic flight has 4 seats left which forces the fare into a higher bucket despite the TATL flight having 15+ seats left in J).

If PHL had a large premium TATL market then AA would have based more 777s/789s at PHL. The fact that nearly all of PHL's TATL flights are on 788s tells me that AA doesn't sell a lot of premium TATL traffic out of PHL, but I do agree that this has partly to do with how AA structures their network and competes out of PHL. AA is leaving a bit of WAS/NYC traffic on the table for UA/DL as there is nearly zero connectivity via PHL. I get it they argue it's a waste of resources (and environmentally unfriendly) and if people want to fly on AA they will drive to PHL but that is a fallacy. I used to book BWI-PHL-XXX and I am not alone in that. I'd prefer a 20 min drive to the airport and add 1.5 hours of flying as opposed to driving 1.5 hours each way to PHL. When AA flew those BWI-JFK flights I did a couple trips (SFO, MAD, etc.) and PHL would have offered me more options than JFK.

I think where AA falls flat here their main TATL hubs (PHL/JFK) does not have the same level of connectivity as their competitors such as DL at JFK/ATL and UA at EWR/IAD and even ORD. Like we all have said - AA blew it big time in the Mid-Atlantc/Northeast market and I believe this region combined is probably the largest market in the USA.