Agreed on this point. CO isn't likely to start up a hub on the west coast anytime soon, and I don't think DEN would be the place to do it anyways, based on the location not being all that convenient for north-south travel, which is the bulk of the money on the west coast.

I'm not sure which cities CO could get in to on non-hub routes out west as focus cities and/or point-to-point runs, especially ones where there is very little competition and lots of passengers travelling, of which I think there are probably very few. AA runs the AUS-SFO route and pulls decent loads, but I'm not sure that there are sufficient loads to have CO share the benefits that AA does on that route. But how many other similar routes are out there that CO could possibly cherry-pick?