Originally Posted by joejones

As it stands right now, the only airports in the Southeast that seem to have both the physical space and the local demand to support a hub operation are MCO, BNA, and RDU.

But a failure of B6 and/or NK would certainly open a lot of room for someone to create a large operation at FLL. To me FLL is more like EWR than LGW. It's definitely the second-string airport for the region, but many people prefer it and there is no reason why it couldn't support a full-service hub, as EWR successfully does for UA.

Many people forget that AA's MIA hub was a direct result of Eastern's liquidation, with an assist from Pan Am's liquidation, which created a vacuum there that someone had to fill (of course UA bought PA's MIA assets but PA was already weak in that market). AA under Crandall actually considered mounting a challenge to DL in ATL, filling the vacuum left by Eastern there, but decided against it since DL was too strong in that market. If anything the competitive scales have tipped even further in DL's favor since then. I think AA and DL are now "too big to fail" in their fortress hub markets, and any future bankruptcy of either would result in the shedding of other assets while maintaining their fortress hubs (for example I could easily imagine DL cutting MSP or DTW to preserve ATL, or AA cutting ORD to preserve DFW and MIA). Which leads me to think there is basically no chance of another carrier successfully building a new ATL or MIA hub in the foreseeable future.

The HNL and GUM hub discussions are just laughable as neither airport is a particularly good hub for anything.