Originally Posted by
ClipperDelta
Hubbing and being the dominant carrier at the US cities that are biggest for international traffic: EWR (for NYC), SFO, ORD and to an extent even IAD.
Delta has primarily JFK and LAX, and to a smaller extent BOS and SEA but both LAX and BOS are only recent developments (in the case of LAX, even though they have had large operations there for a while, they have only had a renewed focus on it in the last few years). And in NYC, even though they have the more well-known New York airport for international travel, they are handicapped by the split between JFK and LGA whereas UA is able to consolidate everything under one roof in EWR.
AA on the other hand has arguably the fewest hubs of the Big Three that are large international travel markets: Miami and Chicago (though playing second fiddle to UA in the latter).
I'm not sure I buy it. Los Angeles is the second largest MSA in the country and AA can't make long haul flights work there except to partner hubs, even when they were the largest carrier in LAX. DL has AKL, CDG, HND, LHR, SYD, and seasonally PPT out of LAX, but UA manages to fly from LAX to secondary markets in Australia, even before their VA partnership. They are also going to be the only US carrier that resumes LAX-PVG.
If you look at a list of CSAs ordered by population and note which airlines have hubs there, you get:
NYC: AA (ish), B6, DL, UA
LAX: AA, DL, UA
WAS: AA (domestic), UA
CHI: AA (ish), UA
SFO: UA, AS
BOS: B6, DL
DFW: AA
HOU: UA
PHL: AA
ATL: DL
MIA/FLL: AA
DET: DL
PHX: AA
SEA: DL, AS
MCO:
MSP: DL
DEN: UA
CLE:
PDX:
STL:
CLT: AA
SLC: DL
SMF:
PIT:
SAT:
I'll give you that UA has strong hubs in the top 5 markets, but that doesn't really explain why they are able to make things like EWR-OPO, EWR-PMI, SFO-AMS, SFO-FCO, IAD-AMM, ORD-SNN, or LAX-BNE work when AA/DL can't. That also doesn't account for UA's significant return to PVG from ORD/LAX/EWR/SFO, with plans to return to PEK from SFO and ORD in the fall.