The SC is nice and relatively undeltafied, but it is a bit out of the way for shorter connections.

I'm surprised it's taken this long to draw MEM down. It's completely redundant with ATL and does not have enough O&D to support a hub. If larger cities like PIT, IND, STL and MCI cannot support a full hub I'm not sure why anyone thinks MEM can.

My guess has always been that DL got some significant savings by piggybacking on the infrastructure that FedEx built and maintained.

The poster who mentioned that UA is not an option for those of us in the SE is spot on, IMO. Being based in HSV now, I never even give UA a second thought for any of my travel except when I go west (which, for me, is rare). At about ~60m, a flight to MEM was short enough to be barely tolerable as a connection, even when going east.

What infrastructure is that? MEM is no better equipped than other airports of comparable size.

Emphasis on the word "guess". I don't know what specifically makes MEM attractive. The fact that it has been a hub for this long post-merger makes me think there must be something attractive about it.

After the merger, DL was using MEM as leverage in its negotiations with ATL. Now that DL's position is firmly entrenched at ATL, savings outweighs leverage.

I seem to remember hearing about his. Someone at ATL should have called Delta's bluff. No way they would have left ATL. Memphis vs. Atlanta...the whole scenario is laughable.

The international terminal cost issues were resolved 3 years ago and DL mentioned both DTW and CVG along with MEM as alternate airports they might shift some ATL traffic through. What little value MEM may have had as bargaining chip has long ceased to exist.


There has been some speculation that MEM has survived as long as it has is due to it's ultra-low operating costs (and certainly FDX and their landing fees is a big part of that). Whether that speculation has any validity, I have no idea. However, STL and PIT were known for their high costs and we see what happened to them, so maybe there is some truth to the speculation.

No one said they were going to leave ATL. They could have just shifted feed to MEM - In the same manner that they have shifted feed away from CVG and MEM.

Although the MEM passenger terminal is not great, the airport itself has remarkable infrastructure. I believe MEM has 4 runways, maybe more. Few airports have as much capacity. This is because of Fedex, but the airport's ability to handle traffic without delays is exceptional.

One of the reasons Fedex is located in Memphis (a) the very helpful central location for package distribution throughout the lower 48 and (b) the lack of weather events that typically cause delays. MEM almost never gets snow; it's far enough inland to avoid hurricanes and tropical storms; it almost never gets fog. Essentially, all the things that usually lead to airport delays almost never delay Memphis (t-storms being the one major exception).

I also understand that MEM has some of the lowest landing fees in the country (because of Fedex, in part). Labor is very cheap in Memphis (TN has no state income tax). Simply put, the MEM airport has a lot going for it that makes it a perfect connecting-hub airport. Indeed, for non O &D traffic I challenge posters to think of a better airport that has more going for it in terms of location, no weather delays, runway capacity, etc.

But in the end, no matter how good these things are for MEM, O&D is what drives Delta's decisions. Perhaps that really is the only thing that can make a hub profitable. If so, then the future of MEM seems certain. (Though I still don't understand why O&D is the major thing, as many people must connect. And ATL just doesn't seem like an ideal connecting airport anymore, too crowded, congested, and delayed. But then what do I know?)

4 runways is not a particularly large number these days. CVG and MSP also have 4. ATL has 5. DTW and DEN have 6. ORD and DFW have 7. There's a bit more complexity here depending on runway configurations, number of parallel runways, and length, but MEM is definitely nothing special.

......for me, MEM has always been the laid-back no-stress DL connection point.....a 30-min connection is not a worry there, unlike a 45 min connection at ATL or DTW, which gets me fidgety

While the short connection times in MEM make for overall faster travel times to/from OKC......the short connection time in MEM means less chance for BBQ ingestion or SkyClub lounging!

I really miss MEM-MFE. Now Delta doesn't have any flights into far south Texas, not even from Atlanta. I hope they use some of that freed capacity to have a flight to McAllen again, even if it was less than 7X per week.

Not sure why anybody hasn't said this, maybe I'm totally overstating the fact, but wouldn't one assume that with FedEx having such a large operation at MEM that DL had to have some sort of deal with them for cargo. That could be what has helped DL stick around for so long...

Fedex has a fleet of over 600 cargo aircraft. I'd be surprised if they are overly dependent upon DL to transport cargo to and from their hub.