Originally Posted by
Unitedloyalflyer
I'd say there are plenty of dual hub cities, just not dual hub airports. Houston is a dual hub city (Hobby is expected to expand again - would be nice if UA could get a few gates there to their hubs), as is Baltimore/Washington. NYC as well. Chicago is a tri hub city
Yes, there are dual-hub ciites but not really among the L3 other than Chicago.
Originally Posted by
jsloan
Yes, of course it matters.
UA is a hub-and-spoke airline. There's really no way to dispute that when you look at their route map -- if they're trying some other strategy, they're doing it completely wrong. But the point of being a hub-and-spoke airline is no longer "we can connect you anywhere in the country in one stop." It's "we can connect you anywhere in the country with at most one stop."
I mean, this is all true. But your conclusion -- that there aren't hubs anymore -- doesn't follow from the facts. You've pointed out why hubs have migrated from "wherever there was enough space to put one, preferably near important flight routes" to "major cities only." But that doesn't make them "focus cities." A focus city is a destination where you have added a few point-to-point routes outside of your hub structure, but through which you don't expect to carry connecting passengers. CLE is the only focus city in UA's network at the moment. UA's hubs are clearly hubs -- it's just that hub placement is driven by the desire to collect a premium for convenience and nonstop travel.
No, my point was never to say that airlines don't operate hubs anymore. Instead, their #1 motivation is to dominate large markets. From that, they capitalize on connecting traffic and as we've all seen commented on this message board many times, it's their international traffic they most importantly try to drive connecting traffic.
Since you brought up CLE, it's worth recalling what UA said (or was rumored to have said) about why they wanted to cease hub operations at CLE. It was because their
connecting traffic wasn't profitable or profitable enough. Everyone knew their O/D traffic was plenty profitable at CLE but there isn't enough of it. Now UA wasn't charging anything less on fares that connected through CLE than they were for city pairs connecting elsewhere so it stands to reason that
domestic connecting traffic (which is what almost all of CLE's connecting traffic was) isn't what''s driving UA profitability.
edit: If any of this is remotely true, we can easily see why UA wouldn't invest in another mid-size market who's primary objective is to serve as another domestic hub.