dylanks

No, on the days I checked the last LAX-PHX is 7:30pm.

dylanks

Well nothing surprises me, but the flights are always full (I know, that means nothing) and the prices are consistently higher than the competition, and seem sufficiently high to get good margins given today's fuel prices. Obviously they could have decided that there are more lucrative options, but it's unclear where those aircraft have gone.

eponymous_coward

- WN is already in PHX.

- PHX serves a metro catchment of around 4.6 million people. That's larger than DEN, CLT, MSP, SLC, SEA, all hubs that support at least one airline (in some cases two, in DEN's case, three).

If AA can't make service work out of a top-15 US metro area, they're not a very good airline. There is already natural demand for service because the 4+ million people who live there aren't planning on driving 400 miles to LAX in order to fly on an airplane. This isn't MEM we're discussing here (which was a much smaller catchment). It's not even LAS (also significantly smaller) or SJC.

If AA decides they don't want to serve a market of 4+ million people, someone (AS, B6, WN) will happily take their money, but there is money in the market, especially in an era where the airlines are fat and happy with domestic profits.

diver858

AA has already moved LUS A321's to presumably more lucrative DFW-based routes, so as long as there is customer demand, aircraft to service the demand, at a reasonable return, from gates they already own, I see little reason to bail on PHX.

Similar / stronger arguments can be made about CLT and PHL, will be interesting to see how Parker responds during the next recession.

LovePrunes

True. but AA can "make service work"in PHX regardless of whether it maintains a hub at PHX or if it downsizes to more of a focus city. I think they still have a way to go to figure out what PHX will be in the long run for AA.


Who would say these people would get in a car all of a sudden? Air service is still available for all former hubs, if that fate awaits PHX nobody is going to do what you seem to be saying is the alternative if PHX is not an AA hub in the future.

eponymous_coward

Exactly how many top 15 cities in the USA don't have a hub in them?

That'd be "zero" (if you consider the San Bernadino/Riverside area served by LAX).

I suggest it's pretty obvious that a US metropolitan area of 4 million people can easily support a hub with O/D traffic alone, given that they all do. Several cities in the 2-4 million population range have hubs supporting multiple airlines (SEA, DEN).

Service to DFW/LAX/ORD/JFK/CLT/PHL/MIA/DCA and forcing connections at LAX/DFW/ORD/CLT to go anywhere else isn't going to cut it if you're living in PHX, when WN is going to have many, many more nonstop options out of the PHX market.

But you are correct, nobody flying out of PHX is going to drive to LAX to fly if AA leaves the market. But they aren't going to stick with AA either on crappy connecting flights. They're going to defect to an airline with nonstop service (WN), and someone will probably move in and try and serve those customers with an alternative (given that top 15 metro areas where some airline goes "here, take my customers!" don't exist in the US any more). B6 or AS would move on that in a hot minute.

This is part of the story of how WN has become the beast that it is, because they vacuumed up customers the legacies have left on the floor from abandoned hubs in SJC, PIT, STL, OAK, LAS and SAN once the legacies left town and gutted service. This is also how B6 picked up their JFK and BOS hubs. This is how AS picked up SEA (as UA slowly drew it down from a focus city to a spoke) as well as presences in SJC/SAN.

The thing is this isn't the 1990's/2000's any more. Airlines make profits now. So "we have to cut the airline back and drop a top 15 metro area because we're running out of money" isn't how AA has to operate. And if AA's going to try and grow against the competition, what makes more sense; giving away a ton of customers in PHX so they can claw those customers back in QLA/NYC/CHI (all three of those markets having multiple large carriers), or keeping a top 15 metro hub (and again, it's not like there's empty top 15 metros you can add hubs to)?

So... rightsize PHX, sure. But that's not going to be a lot different than current operations. Drop it as a hub? Well, if UA can make DEN work against WN and F9... and AS and DL can make SEA work... why can't AA make PHX work?

DenverBrian

I think many opinions here are being made based on a 1983 Rand McNally road atlas. "Lookie - Phoenix is a little desert town. Why would anyone want to put an airline hub there?"

ClimbingCook

I think many opinions here are being made based on the weather showing 120 degrees in Phoenix. It makes people wonder who would intentionally fly through there.

grbauctions

This Is the One area That I'm suprised AA or US has not tried to grow. Mex and Central south America. Europe with BA and I'll bet AA one day with a 787 could work in the coming years. Hnd Nrt is a ways off but Mexico and down farther south sure seems like it could be a gateway to.

scnzzz

Geographically, PHX is about as well-positioned to be a hub for the Mountain West as MSO (had to look up Missoula).

SLC, DEN and CLT are hubs because they're geographically well suited to domestic connecting traffic, and there's a reasonable amount of local traffic. PHX has the latter but not the former, unless one's origin and/or destination is in the Southwest. [even though CLT is positioned near a "corner" of the country, the population density in the mid-Atlantic and SE mean that it's a very different proposition than PHX]

AA will not de-hub PHX because having it is better than not having a Mountain West hub at all (and LAX is a non-starter due to both location and capacity), but pmAA did reasonably well without it pre-merger (at least, I doubt their problems were due to the absence of a hub over there). Sure, they couldn't do much for routes in the Mountain West but I sort of doubt that the PHX hub would have been a big part of the valuation were the acquisition to have been the other way around.

But fine-tuning the fleet to better serve the entire network - if that means reducing capacity at PHX, why not? It's not like hanging onto market share in/via PHX doesn't come at an opportunity cost (in the short term)...

Interestingly, of the largest 20 metropolitan areas in the US, there seem to be a few that aren't really hubs. (granted, my source was wikipedia. I'm lazy, but these don't seem too far off https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...tistical_Areas)

#10 : BOS (yes, B6 and AA connect a bunch of NE traffic, but really? Not in the true sense of a hub, IMO. Would be a great hub location for TATL but that isn't the case either)
#13 : ONT (LAX is a bit of a haul)
#17 : SAN (geography)
#18 : TPA (MIA won South America)
#20 : STL (which is too bad, as the proximity to both ORD and DFW killed it)

Oddly enough, CLT which is a pretty big domestic hub by any standard, comes in at #22 , and SLC at #48 (!). FWIW, PHX clocks in at #12 .

grbauctions

I wonder if this trend has changed any in the year since this tread started..

scnzzz

I don't That's like saying SAC and FAT are served by SFO if you take traffic into account. Half the distance, twice the traffic.

There are metropolitan areas outside the top 15 that are hubs - so geography does count (as do weather, topography, financial incentives etc.). Not saying population doesn't count - but rather, that it's not everything.

(and I still don't think of BOS as a true hub; at least not in the sense that ORD, IAH, DFW, DEN etc. are)

grbauctions

Phx is Badly needed. IF and I mean IF Phx Was dehubbed they would ONLY have LAX and LAX is A Gateway HUB not a connecting HUB. Phx is a Connecting HUB. AA presence is crappy already in western US. North/south up and down the coast is awful and AS is needed. For the worlds largest airline they need a better presece in the PNW and Up and down the coast. IF Phx was Axed DL and others would be right there to gobble it up.

Um IF and when there comes a down turn I hope Doug Parker is in retirement. Personally I think He's done it all and would like to see some fresh visions for AA. He's done a amazing Job I starting Flying in the 90's on HP right after he became boss.
Oh I've not liked a few of his visions but for the most part he's done the impossible and should get out while He's got a dam good legacy. (I know there is plenty of cheap and annoying decision) Big Picture.
Please no inflammatory comments about him if you don't like him.

carlosdca

back in the pre-merger days, I found myself flying a lot for work to Mexico (different cities).
While US airways was on a different alliance, their connections through PHX were the best when going to Mexico.
As much as I wanted to fly AA for status, the flights through DFW were just awful, so I just flew US.
I don't think the market for CA commuters to Mex (or vice versa) is small by any means.

Should AA eliminate PHX and I need to fly to Mexico I would probably fly an airline with more convenient itineraries than through DFW/IAH/DEN/SLC.

Also, I don't think LAX has the capacity to absorb all the gates in PHX. Someone that says differently has not been to PHX or LAX.

WiscAZ

Yep. Seems to me there's some overaction because 2 days out of the year PHX has had a "weather" issue. Last I checked you don't have to leave the airport to connect on AA so outside of a warmer than normal jetway and taxi the operations run pretty smooth.