chasgoose

Couldn't they set up some sort of KLM Asia type subsidiary for the PHL-TLV flight?

ExpatExp

Well, one single flight per day, and only in the summer.

MAH4546

AA owned jets have landed in Tel Aviv for the past week on a daily basis. Yet they still seem to be able to take off.

phlwookie

Yup, Philly is either the 5th or 6th largest metro area depending on what definition and data source you look at, and past statements by US management have shown it to be a money maker with strong O&D as you'd expect, and as borne out by the security lines at times

In terms of population centers, the new AA is really, really well positioned to take advantage of local traffic in the major ones. Here are the top ten Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the US (source: 2012 Census Bureau estimates on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...stical_Areas):

1. NYC (JFK hub, decent LGA presence)
2. LA (hub)
3. Chicago (hub)
4. DFW (hub)
5. Houston
6. Philadelphia (hub)
7. DC (DCA hub, restricted use via slots & perimeter rule increasing fares)
8. Miami (hub)
9. Atlanta
10. Boston

Having hubs in 7 of the top 10 cities is not a bad place to be. PHX is #13 and CLT #23 on that list.

LarkSFO

For US Flyers, in general and in CLT:

Does gaining AA/OW outweigh losing UA/*A?

Obviously, this is dependent upon individual travel patterns and destinations.

It is going to be interesting to watch how this plays out - some level of migration of FF'ers one way or the other, and the impact this may have on hub / focus city / routing decisions the new AA makes.

jmr50

That's hyperbolic. But, it does seem likely a schedule flight authority might require AA coming to some terms with IL. Honestly, though, if it's a profitable route, whatever fraction of $19MM it takes to settle the claims are just a drop in a the bucket.

If.

jmr50

Say what you will about PHL, it doesn't have the O&D to support a ton of int'l premium travel. Hence my suggestion it be positioned as a major northeast connecting market (which lets JFK stand more or less on NYC's strong O&D).

Microwave

I hadn't looked at it that way before; it's certainly eye-opening to see it laid out in this way.

lhl12

It is also worth noting that only one of those ten (BOS) is not a hub for any of the big 3. Merged AA-US will be a very close #2 in market share to B6 in BOS. If they want to grow their share with high value business travelers, they have a great opportunity to do so. BOS probably can't ever be a hub in the same sense as DFW, ORD, etc., because it is at the far upper right corner of the USA, but there is a lot of high value business traffic available for someone if they can figure out the right way to approach the opportunity.

phlwookie

Yup, there are basically two airports in the country that reliably generate tons of premium travel: JFK and LAX, with SFO potentially being a distant third, and you see premium transcons and higher end international services aligned with that. There are plenty of other markets with strong O&D traffic, however.

CMK10

I'd say BOS is a hub for Delta in all but name.

pbarnette

I think that there is less high value traffic in BOS than folks would assume. The market is simply too competitive and the companies in BOS don't pay more just for fun. Even the big business routes - BOS-RDU, BOS-SFO, BOS-NYC, BOS-WAS, BOS-LAX, BOS-CHI - have significant LCC competition, with B6 dominating on some of those routes even. I don't know of any major company in BOS that has anything other than a lowest-coach policy for domestic travel and I know at least a few of them have "preferred carrier" agreements with pretty much every single carrier out there. My own company, for example, has AA, UA, DL, AF, B6, LH, LX, BA, and I think even US as "preferred carriers".

I'd disagree. BOS is a major spoke, but they don't really route traffic through BOS.

kellio33

American Express has more employees in PHX than HQ in NYC.

whlinder

Hopefully the new One-World frequent flyer base in WAS leads to an increase in BA service (BA used to run 4x IAD including a daylight flight but IRRC has settled on 3x, all over night, plus 1 BWI) and a return of IB service to MAD.

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I struggle to see how CLT with a higher cost structure can continue to serve the level of European connecting traffic that it does today, with additional connecting options in JFK, ORD, DFW and MIA (and of course PHL). There's a pretty small area where connecting in CLT would be preferable to the other hubs but I doubt it is enough to sustain all that European service. Think CLT loses those flights to some combo of ORD, DFW and MIA.

phlwookie

Curious list ... it misses this company, headquartered adjacent to the PHX airport and with revenue of over $25 billion: http://www.avnet.com/en-us/about-us/Pages/default.aspx I don't know the PHX area all that well but I would guess there are other larger firms based there. Is that list intended as a list of up and coming firms?

By "CLT with a higher cost structure" I assume you mean labor? The airport usage fees have been kept low as a result of good management, and per passenger enplanement costs are probably further lowered by the volume of passengers and flight movements that provide strong revenue and economies of scale, and this is one of the main reasons US has grown it to the hub it is today. Aside from the better geographical location enjoyed by CLT, its costs being far lower than PIT is another reason it won out under old US East.

For those going to Europe, except for some of Florida that might prefer MIA, CLT isn't a bad place to connect for most of the Southeast, and most of those folks won't backtrack to DFW or ORD. They can of course go through PHL or JFK though expansions at JFK are problematic as well as delays. Also, routing Europe flights to DFW and to a lesser extent MIA and ORD result in longer stage lengths than to JFK/PHL/CLT, thus higher aircraft utilization, labor costs, and of course, fuel costs, which coupled with lower airport usage fees, do argue against pulling down too much from CLT. My understanding is that the others have higher usage fees as well, particularly MIA, though I don't have that data handy. That said, US has preferred to route most European traffic via PHL and use CLT for overflow, primarily in the summer busy season, with newish routes to places like DUB, FCO, MAD etc., so perhaps what they'll actually do is try to put bigger planes onto PHL-Europe and indeed tear down some of the newer CLT overflow routes.