The flip side of that is that the West Podunk Airport probably only has a handful of employees and maybe only one or two gates. So it may not be as important to consolidate resources in those locations, but they are also much easier to consolidate. Maybe not as important or critical, but much easier to accomplish. That may be enough to see some of them changed over quickly.

Great point. Lots of small savings quickly realized.

Honestly, small airports can be relatively expensive to staff. There may be 3 flights spread out over the whole day. Think about having agents there at 4:30am to check-in the first flight of the morning and agents/ground crew there until 11pm to receive the last flight of the evening..

So, consolidating operations where CO, US, and UA each have, say, 3 flights a day might yield CONSIDERABLE savings.

isnt that the point of the announced cooperation? consolidate operations where it makes sense and creates cost savings. eg. if CO were to move to UA's terminal in SFO, why would should CO rebuild the PC?

now, i dont want to see any clubs disappear, but that's the point of this cooperation.

its not going to simply be about codeshares anymore. obviously it wont work everwhere. and doesnt need to work everywhere.

PHX will stay the same. they're together already. CO picks up a club, and there's not really a huge need for US connections. who's going to fly from a CO or UA hub, just to connect to a US flight. PHX isnt an intl gateway.

IAH can stay the same. the terminal train is super easy to use, however, it'd benefit UA'ers to move to B,C or E so they can get clubs.

CO is getting screwed at ORD, so they better move, unless NW is moving, and we get to the keep the club.

we could do this for every city, but as stated by formeraa, the *A partners, especially the ailing US based ones, should really try to cooperate as much as possible.

The Master Plan of SFO:
2009-2011 Re-doing the old International Terminal
2012-2014 CO and AS gates are removed/torn down. Old International Terminal opens
2015-2016 US Air gates are removed and new wing of Terminal One opens with 15 gates
DL/NW/HA gates are reduced to 6 gates from 10
2017-2018 DL/NW/HA gates are completely removed. Additional gates added to
Terminal One: now totalling 22 gates
2018 Final Plan Grand Total of 40 gates, up from 2009 total of 27 gates

The most interesting case for me that isn't a hub is ATL - I wish I could dredge up the details of what we were discussing in The Box, because the two differing opinions on how that may turn out were both very interesting from a planning and an alliance-concourse standpoint.

SFO only has plans for 40 gates? I would've thought they would have, I don't know, at least twice that. UA hub, lots of TPAC service, WN moved back in, etc. SAN has 41 gates today for pete's sake.

One option was basically taking over half of the T terminal and using the existing (tiny) RCC as a lounge there. I don't know what the other option was, but I cannot imagine them getting additional gate space out in D where CO has gates now for UA to move to. Or they could just stay put as is. They're inside the same security so it isn't too big a deal. They could consolidate check-in desks and keep the gates, for example, and get a bit of efficiency without too much trouble.

Just that one terminal, not the whole airport.
http://www.flysfo.com/web/page/non-flash/

Let us hope and pray that CO and UA do not coordinate ground staff at any airport where CO customers are forced to deal with UA agents for check-in, boarding or customer service.

You can hope and pray all you want. It won't work. Such consolidation of positions is one of the goals of the streamlining of ground operations, and they aren't going to only keep CO employees.

One of the other options we were talking about then also had something to do with FL moving to E, and IIRC something like OW having T and part of A () with Star in B/C and ST in D/E. I probably got some detail of that wrong, and as I look at it I know what I just wrote probably wouldn't work...we need ssullivan to not be so busy with work, because he was the one coming up with the theories, along with colpuck I think.

That's awfully noble. I'd sooner hope and pray that the UA crackpots learn how to deal with people thanks to the CO ground staff...a majority of whom understand that the customer comes first.

DL needs way too many gates for anything like that to work. And E has to remain mixed thanks to immigration and customs facilities.

The OW and *A operations combined probably only need half a normal terminal (or all of T) anyways, though I doubt DL wants to give up on T.

Ah, ok. That makes more sense. I was reading it thinking she was talking about terminal changes for the whole airport.