3Cforme

Aircraft movements is a particularly poor gauge of airport size and revenue potential. It ignores average gauge and adds in private (and military) aircraft movements.

Revenue Passenger Miles is a better metric since it takes distance into account, too.

dls25

I would disagree. Why does distance matter?

I would go by # of seats.

BarrenLucidity

By passenger miles CLT is busier than Miami by a few million and 10th busiest in the US. Any way you cut it CLT is AA's second hub and I guess that's the real point.

halls120

If more international flights are added without a commensurate improvement to the miserable international arrivals experience, I'll continue to avoid CLT for my international travel.

Antarius

its both. DFW has excellent geography AND can maintain healthy O&D traffic numbers. This allows business travelers to get more destinations and pay a premium for the nonstop (higher yield) while also being able to fill the rest of the plane with connections.

if it was purely geographic, STL would still be a hub. Excellent location, not nearly big enough to support a hub from O&D.

Antarius

I'm confused as to why so much hate for CLT. Yes it is crowded, but I actually like the main concourse and dont have a ton of issues there.

compared to ORD or LAX or PHL, CLT is far better. Not to the level of DFW or JFK T8, IMO, but on par with PHX, MIA.

GTITAN

Oh, there are some folks that may have been LAA here that don't care for CLT or see why it is a Hub for reconstituted AA. Such is the way of things. Personally, I like my home airport. YMMV

Safe Travels

Silver Meteor

People LOVE to complain on these boards. Some people think they are to good for a certain airport, etc.

I have been through Charlotte many, many times in my travels. No problem with the airport at all. Geez.....

ashill

Which of course largely continues pmAA's and pmUS's strategies. pmAA's hubs are better suited to O&D traffic (higher costs but also higher revenue potential for O&D traffic), so pmAA focused on maximizing revenue out of those hubs with the cornerstone strategy, prioritizing O&D traffic more than pmUS did. pmUS's hubs are, by and large, better suited to connecting traffic: smaller markets with less revenue potential but lower costs, so pmUS focused more on connecting traffic than pmAA did. Though the merger certainly leads to some mixing and matching, the pmUS and pmAA hubs retain their different strengths and therefore the differing strategies that are most effective.

Antarius

Haha.

I am LAA as well, but still don't get the venom for CLT. I understand not wanting to fly on a LUS a320 with no power or IFE, but that isn't the fault of CLT.

MarkOK

Or MCI -- TWA's original mid-US strategic cross-country hub.

When it comes to DFW as an -international- superhub -- I think the O&D traffic is key.

The metroplex is something like the 4th largest metro, 4th largest economy, and 1st fastest growing population in the country now. However, if you dig up the rankings, DFW is only ~15th for O&D traffic (according to the data that the bond rating agencies use -- I grabbed this from a Forbes article from last Feb). But the reason it ranks as low as 15th is mostly due to relative weakness in domestic O&D -- DAL sucks a ton of domestic O&D traffic from the metroplex but barely serves any international O&D. A comparison to make here is DEN -- an airport only a bit smaller in total passenger traffic than DFW and has all the same geographical benefits as DFW (and also sits on a ton of acreage) and has a very healthy O&D market all in all. But, it connects to HALF as many international destinations as DFW. At the end of the day, Denver is also half the size as the Dallas-Fort-Worth metroplex in terms of population and GDP. And that is a big disadvantage when you have 300 seats to fill a day to a place like Shanghai.

When it comes to making an international hub -- it makes sense to do so where you have a base of international O&D traffic, which DFW has. The O&D passengers are the ones that the airline has an advantage to capture because they offer a direct route whereas their competitors don't. Thus, I am skeptical that it makes a ton of sense to grow CLTs international operations all that much even if CLTs geography is well suited as a hub for domestic N/S traffic.

DCP2016

I have a love-hate relationship with CLT, I've flown through there since the US days and continue to do so today. The only two downsides to it I personally have are since it's so banked/busy that if weather hits the operation turns to hell. Now you can say this happens at all airports, and it certainly does, but CLT at the moment lacks gate space/room to handle the extra aircraft/passengers. The second thing I dislike is the terrible & rude concessions employees. I've had some wonderful airline employees there both mainline & Eagle however I've never encountered a pleasant concessions employee at CLT. They either aren't very smart, never smile, or are just downright unpleasant to you. On the flip side I have no complaints with the concessions people at ATL, JFK, LGA etc.

nall

I can speak from the experience from a few small firms based in the southeast - CLT was consistently rated far below DFW, ATL, .etc for connections. There were a number of reasons, but notably I recall that people didn't like the trudge at CLT, especially when mainline-eagle or vice-versa is involved, where-as say DFW's SkyTrain makes connecting to opposite sides of the airport far easier. US Airways also liked to offer very short connections there, which I think exacerbated the problem. (IIRC, there were FAR more misconnects there than anywhere else.)

I recall several people saying the rocking chairs at CLT were a nice touch though, so I guess that's something.

aztimm

I've connected at CLT many times over the years. I think the connections now are timed closer than they were in the past. Compared with PHL, the mainline to express (or the other way around) trudge is about equal.

And PHL also has rocking chairs, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone mention them. It is usually easier to actually get one at PHL (and there could be outlets nearby too). I don't think I've ever seen a vacant rocking chair at CLT.

ElmhurstNick

The biggest challenge with CLT is the congestion of the B and C concourses when everybody's trying to make a connection, flights are boarding, and everybody is spilling into the aisles. It makes a 45 minute connection from high-C to high-B really annoying. ORD doesn't have that problem, but it has the problem of no moving walkways at all, and they could really use one at least between G1 and L1. Fortunately, I start/end at ORD so I don't have to worry about it, but it makes MCT a real challenge for those who do connect.

But the other challenge with ORD is that Chicago is a hub for three airlines (UA, AA, WN) and big enough to attract significant amounts of LCC traffic. I price a lot of stuff out from ORD, MDW and RDU, and unless it's a city on I-95, it's almost always cheaper to my destinations out of Chicago. Add in the horrible situation of landing at Terminal 5 and trying to connect, and it's not a great situation for American.