LPCJr

In today's Philadelphia Inquirier. I can't comprehend further reductions to BOS. Those planes are already absolutely jammed.

http://www.philly.com/philly/busines...s-PHL-hub.html

3Cforme

The three-year commitment to maintain hubs at historical levels made with states Attorneys General is nearly complete. (Yes: merger 12/9/13)

http://hub.aa.com/en/nr/pressrelease...orneys-general

Dallas49er

(Conjecture) Could this be the 1st shot at "de-hubbing" PHL?

(Sarcasm on) If so, does one think the overly customer centric gate agents in PHL, can get jobs as overly customer centric "orange shirts" () at security? (Sarcasm off)

wrp96

Yes, let's rebank another hub, because rebanking DFW and ORD has done so much good for on time stats and performance.

bridge29

I don't see the doom and gloom, yes PHL suffers from weakened O&D due to proximity to NYC's airports with cheaper fares, but AA will not reduce PHL to a focus city any time soon. Philadelphia is a huge city and metropolitan area, and AA still sends a ton of connecting traffic through - where else is it going to go?

Pulling back to six banks instead of eight makes sense. AA admits that their "first of the day" flights (leaving outstations sometimes as early as 5:30am) just aren't successful, so they are pulling those back.

This should, however, be a wake-up call to airport management that relying on AA and not offering incentives to other airlines (particularly European carriers) has been a mistake. It's no wonder you are seeing a Frontier build up (hiring 100 flight attendants in the region) and Icelandair starting service. I suspect we'll see an even bigger Frontier push next spring/summer.

upinsmoke

So we'll end up with shortened connection times in some of the most congested airspace in the world. What could go wrong?

SANbound

This

And we're heading into winter to boot!

cedric

Where do you get that idea?
PHL is already a banked hub.
There will be two fewer banks during the day, using larger aircraft.
There is not a single indication that connection length is either increasing or decreasing.
I know some people like to complain for complaining sake, but at least read the article before doing so...

ThreeJulietTango

^

All of the LUS hubs were already banked. It's only the LAA hubs that can't seem to manage it for some reason.

Dallas49er

Then there are those of us (participants, un-willing participants, victims, etc.) who can speak to the "glory" of re banking.

(Sarcasm on) Personal experience-2016-If you are sitting in DFW, when you REALLY JUST WANT TO GET OFF (AND HOME), OR GET TO YOUR NEXT FLIGHT, and there was weather within 25,000 miles, then you are in deep tapioca.

<redacted>

Ldnn1

Is O&D really only 10-15%? I know PHL isn't exactly NYC but I didn't think it was that low.

thorofare

So that's why AA took the PHL-FRA flight off their schedule.

Ldnn1

On re-reading I think that figure is for origin only. There could well be another 10, 15, 20 or even 50% whose destination is PHL. It's the combined O&D figure that matters.

ashill

Well, presumably there will be less total connecting traffic carried, redistributing it to other hubs. They also mention using larger planes on PHL-BOS, but there are already lots of A321s and 757s (and A330s in the winter), so it's not clear to me how much bigger they can go.

For local traffic, flying PHL-BOS only saves about two hours (door-to-door) relative to the Amtrak Regional for us, and we have no trouble getting very cheap fares on AA. The Acela cuts that difference by 45-65 minutes. So I have trouble imagining that even the local traffic is hugely lucrative. Or at least the advance-purchase local traffic, which they can revenue manage away and leave plenty of space for the short-notice local traffic at high fares.

ashill

THat would be a most unusual way of reporting the statistics. I suspect it's slightly sloppy wording by the newspaper reporter (a first!) and that the really either meant "Only 10 percent to 15 percent of passengers on eastbound transatlantic flights originate in this region" or "Only 10 percent to 15 percent of passengers on transatlantic flights originate in or travel to this region".