I think it's been said that they key to hub profitability is its attractiveness as an international gateway and its O&D traffic.

I'd also look at the problem from another direction: Where do you see a need for additional international gateway travel? I see China and India.

So my question is: What U.S. cities are logical choices for gateways to East Asia and South Asia?

Those that you already see flights to East Asia and South Asia are the logical choices. They are either places with lots of demand, or places that are north enough to provide good connections.

DEN is neither.

Some places may seem okay geographically, but are actually not, for some flights. For example, SEA-DEL is about the same distance as EWR-DEL. But from EWR, the plane rides the jetstream and cuts through Scandinavia, and preset routes via Russia, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, etc. But I don't think there's established Polar Routes over Siberia to get down to India from the US west coast (at least for now, though Air India may be interested).

Even if there is a preset route (a la EWR-HKG), the Russians still make that trip very difficult to plan/coordinate/navigate. It takes 4 hours for CO Ops to go through all the notices that are filed every day, along with the usual weight and balance planning, to get that flight out the door. I actually heard a UA plane on channel 9 at SFO frvlining clearance from ATC for takeoff because their route was so specific that they didn't want to take off early. Truly crazy.

[QUOTE=J.Edward;8825978DEN seems to do well for UA and I would suspect the catchment area of DEN is impressive too.

As for a connecting hub...not sure. Maybe for regional markets but I would think DEN to be too far east to be a player on North/South West Coast traffic.
[/QUOTE]

As usual, J Edward provides a methodical analysis Just to add on his above comment, UA uses DEN as a relief valve for connecting east-west traffic because (1) ORD has pretty much reached capacity, and (2) seats out of ORD can be sold more lucratively as O&D for the large corporate travel base in Chicago. I read an article a while back about UA increasing DEN flights to connect more east-west flights.

CO hasn't reached saturation at CLE and IAH hubs for connecting east-west traffic and probably wouldn't benefit from another hub for that purpose. AA bought the failing TWA for an additional mid-continent hub at STL but didn't need it after 9/11. STL has even less O&D traffic than DEN, so AA has had difficulty making it a viable hub.

CO has great infrastructure in Mexico that could support Denver traffic with little incremental cost. The key is incremental traffic beyond passengers originating in Denver. I don't know the mechanics of Code Share, but Code Share deals with NW and AK that would feed Denver traffic to Mexico might be good business without robbing from EWR and IAH. The other unanswred question in my mind is where the metal would come from to fly the Mexico routes. There may be some RJs available, and CO has had good success with RJs to Mexico from IAH.

I can't see Denver as a hub due to existing competition, but the Southwest model of transcon flights with an intermediate stop might work. I used to fly WN to the West Coast from Austin with a stop in Las Vegas and always got there quicker than on AA via DFW or CO via IAH.

Poco

A west coast hub would be good and could be used to build up Asia more (or the could merge with UAL and get Asia that way).

SFO is very delay prone (fog). IIRC, LAX is supposed to get smaller not larger. I would think SJC could work if you can get in during a tech boom. They want to get an international destination other than Mexico again (not since AA canceled the SJC-NRT flight have they had this) and they are in the process of building a new terminal building (due to open sometime in 2010). So, the city leaders might give an airline incentive to fly out to some place in Asia or Europe. Problems with SJC are the ability to get the gates in a pattern that isn't a straight line (SJC is on a pretty tight property with very little room for expansion), a curfew (11:30 - 6:30 every night and you have rich people on both sides of the airport who won't budge on this), and running both runways could be tricky (though they are both 11,000'). It's difficult to picture a good west coast city.

Otherwise, I think DEN won't work for the reasons stated above (it's not that big of a city anyway).

LAS? Lord knows there's plenty of land around there... if gates are a problem you could probably build a(nother) new terminal (perhaps one without slots). And it has no curfew and is not likely to get one, much to the dismay of many residents. Sure as a destination/origin it's a cluster%*@(, but maybe it works as a "west coast" hub.

I thought it would be helpful to list western US metropolitan areas with populations over 1MM from Wikipedia:
Los Angeles�Long Beach�Santa Ana - 12MM
San Francisco�Oakland�Fremont - 4MM
Phoenix�Mesa�Scottsdale - 4MM
Riverside�San Bernardino�Ontario - 4MM
Seattle�Tacoma�Bellevue - 3MM
San Diego�Carlsbad�San Marcos - 3MM
<Denver fits here> - 2MM
Portland�Vancouver�Beaverton - 2MM
Sacramento�Arden-Arcade�Roseville - 2MM
San Jose�Sunnyvale�Santa Clara - 2MM
Las Vegas�Paradise - 2MM
Salt Lake City - 1MM

Los Anageles and San Francisco would be my uninformed choices. The airports themselves would seem to be problematic and but I wonder if there are any solutions involving a big infrastructure investment from the municipalities?

I think the SFO delays could be offset by utilizing OAK more. If companies invested a little bit into that airport it would be a great relief valve.

The reason I posted PDX is that I think it is an under served market international market. There are a few transcons going there but not a whole lot (if any) international traffic.