From that snippet of what I read he does corporate speak very well. Saying something without coming out and being clear about it. In this case we are narrowing NYC to be O&D and leveraging our other hubs for connections because of the perceived heavy competition in NYC. Instead he spoke in nonsensical circles.

Yep, MEM was the NW southern hub and great to connect through. ATL's geographic proximity post merger killed it.

Safe Travels

That's because UA also runs a large connecting hub at EWR. It is those connections, not just O&D, that allow UA to offer the frequency of flights and destinations that it does at EWR.

I found this article to be somewhat reassuring. I don't understand the hate re: connecting via LHR. NYC based it's great. I use it multiple times a year and it provides late departures from Europe to NYC that you can't easily get with other hubs. I can take afternoon departures from anywhere in Europe and connect to late flights LHR-JFK. I just wish BA would add more late night flights from LHR to the continent so that I could more easily use their 7:45am day flight to Europe without having to overnight in London.

(1) LHR security is a nightmare and (2) BA's CE (my connection to Europe) is sort of a joke.

Transiting LHR is a "dream" come true. If someone considers "nightmares" to be dreams in a world where LHR transits can be rather nightmarish compared to some other European transit options for US-Europe and Europe-US travel.

MSP (the entire airport) is majority O&D. In domestic O&D MSP is bigger than IAH or PHL - it's the 18th largest airport in the country. I don't see the value in making doomed-hub analogies.

JFK is the 2nd largest domestic O&D airport in the country and of course adds millions of international O&D passengers. AA's decision to compete very selectively at JFK (and across NYC broadly) is pretty surprising. One has to wonder how it sees itself fitting against UA/DL/B6 in this context.

Yeah. What UA and DL said about CLE and MEM is actually quite different than what AA says about NYC. They both said essentially that CLE/MEM serve unique connecting markets and act as relievers for their larger hubs with better O&D (ORD/IAD for UA, ATL for DL). That's not exactly a network function that can't be dropped; there was little that MEM or CLE brought to the table (ie O&D) that couldn't be moved elsewhere if it ever made more sense. AA has said that JFK is focused on premium O&D (which was mostly its role in the pmAA network, although pmAA didn't have PHL so JFK was a bit more important for connections). That's clearly not a great situation to be in -- you want both O&D and connections at a true hub to ensure the robust schedule that O&D traffic likes but can't support on its own in most cases -- but it doesn't seem like a kind of market that is likely to completely go away for AA. NYC can certainly support significant nonstops that aren't to AA hubs, and O&D is less subject to a death spiral effect than connecting traffic, especially for the D part of O&D.

Really, the only similarity between MEM/CLE and NYC is that in all three cases the airlines said positive things. Duh; you're not going to say "this hub is terrible and doomed" until you actually kill it.

In other words, EWR is able to serve in UA's network as both the JFK/LGA (NYC O&D) and PHL (European connections from much of the US) roles in AA's network. JFK can't do both well for AA (or really for DL, at least it doesn't serve European connections as well as EWR does for UA or PHL does for AA). That's a clear advantage for UA.

Isn't Jetblue mainly O&D at JFK? Is it just because they have a lower cost structure than AA that they can be so large?

Classy :td::td:

You must not fly through PHL very often.

JFK is even worse, especially for International to domestic connections. 1+ hour lines in immigration at 5am (I can't imagine the afternoon when many flights from Europe arrive). Then a long walk with vague signage to the AirTrain. I had a much better experience at PHL - not much of a wait in immigration at 2pm (when multiple Europe flights arrive) and no need to take a train to my domestic connection.

JFK also has rude employees

are you talking about JFK T8? Because I've found immigration in the afternoon to be fairly quick, even with multiple 777s arriving. The bags were a different story, but still not excessive. Maybe I've been lucky??

But I think you may be thinking of a T7 to T8 international to domestic connection, bc I have never needed to use the AirTrain to connect from an AA to AA flight.