Originally Posted by
pbarnette
Not trying to pooh-pooh EWR as a hub, because it is a huge asset. I just feel that the low-hanging fruit may be picked clean and that a combined CO/UA would be smart to deploy their international fleet more broadly and tap into some of the markets where CO is currently not competitive, such as the West Coast and some of the other major international gateways, like BOS or IAD.
I agree that we can expect to see some diversity in the route planning. IAD and EWR will both remain as gateways. ORD, too. Maybe BOS will add to it. For that big middle chunk of the country expect that a large number of destinations will be one stop away, with that stop in EWR/IAD/ORD/???. For folks in a gateway city the stop can be on either side of the pond using partners on the Europe side. If anything comes of these mergers I think it will be an increase in international capacity and routing options from US-based carriers. Domestic service is a whole different story
