When its an E-140, yah it is!

Mostly on small a/c. Not anything near DCA. Compare that to the LUS and LAA days. AA doesn't even fly NYC/TPA, NYC/FLL and NYC/RSW direct.

Yes, for us, that was the problem. We went to FLL out of NYC for a friend's daughter's Bat Mitzvah a couple of years ago. It became an all-day ordeal each way, as we had to fly through CLT, in January, and there were delays. Last year, we flew to FRA on AA. Yikes. JFK to CLT to FRA on the way over. Meh. On the way back, we made the, as it turned out, huge mistake of being in Turin the day before our flight back. We had a flight back from Turin on LH at 1:00 pm the afternoon before. Plenty of time, right? Wrong. All flights from Turin to FRA got cancelled.

We caught the first flight into FRA the following morning, but FRA is huge, and we just missed the CLT flight by ten minutes. AA put us on the flight into PHL, which was perfect, timing wise. Arriving into PHL was not wonderful. PHL was a madhouse of an airport, where no one seemed to know anything ("Where is the Admiral's Club?" "Huh?") and delays were the order of the day (Our commuter flight into JFK was delayed by several hours; the gal sitting behind us had to take a flight into MAD and was not going to make it; we were told in the AC that these flights are routinely delayed out of PHL by several hours). We could not believe that this is how AA welcomes passengers into the US.

Do you have any reason to specifically want a direct NYC-FLL when there are roughly a dozen of NYC-MIA?

DCA-FLL is gone too for what its worth.

Me personally no but I assume some living in Broward would like to avoid Miami Dade/Broward traffic to MIA airport. Given that AA at one time had 2-3 daily 757 LGA/FLL flights. Not to mention LGA/MCO 757 flights, LGA/TPA and LGA/PBI (year round). Can't remember if there was ever a LGA/RSW flight. Other than MIA B6 and DL have pretty much chased AA out of FL.

Don't believe RSW was served via LGA. I'm pleaed PBI has made a return (even seasonally). With limited slots, returns on capital invested in business-heavy Eagle markets makes more sense than sending multiple daily mainliners to FLL/MCO/TPA/PBI at leisure fares. Also, DL's ability to (re)enter and sustain LGA-MIA in particular speaks volumes to the network advantage it has been able to leverage in NYC.

Ultimately DL decided to make the investment to make itself the number airline out of NYC. Now whether the investment was worth it? Since DL doesn't disclose profitability by station we realy don't know.

It's certainly a focus city, but to call their NYC operation a hub, which some people do, is disingenuous.

We're talking about the #1 market in the US. Whether the investment "was worth it" need not be measured for many years still. DL seems to be pleasing shareholders as well as customers without breaking out profitability by station, so I'd give them a pass on this metric. If these routes continue to gravitate toward mainline/more premium RJs, that's a meaningful indicator. If they gravitate more toward regional jets with no first class to "better compete" with UA and AA offerings, that's also a meaningful indicator.

If you add LGA and JFK together (excluding EWR), you have 17.5 million passenger movements and 276 daily flights which puts it on par with PHX and well above the LAX hub and the DCA hub.

Except that is across two different airports. Not exactly a seemless (or advisable) connecting experience.

I'm flying LGA-ORD right now on a Monday morning and there are ZERO people on the UPG list and I cleared at T-100.