RNC
 

RNC and its effect on Cle and the rest of the Cleveland area is way overblown.

Cle will have little impact. BKL will have the most change. One week will hardly change anything in the normal peak season of the year. Check the last several conventions and you will see little traffic change. Just displacement of the normal travel crowd. Much of the area will be dead as locals people avoid the convention. This happens in every city. It will be a net $$$ loss for the metro area. Many studies have shown this to be the case and why many hoped events should be avoided from a strict economic analysis.

Huh? Who's talking about the RNC's effect on CLE? Not me. The RNC's convention only matters because United won't dare land the coup de grâce on Hopkins until after that's over and the Nation's eyes turn elsewhere.

RNC
 

The RNC in Cle will not have any effect on any plans by United before or after.

It also will not have any factor for any airline. Any ads or drops and airlines could care less about the RNC. If an airline dropped all flights the convention would have no bearing on its timing. Publicity by whom???

It is interesting that Dallas was the other final candidate for the RNC which is a large AA hub serving many more cities then CLE yet for a variety of reasons they still choose CLE for the convention. United did mention it would consider adding some service for the convention.

Sorry. I fell asleep. What did you say? :rolleyes:

CLE was the final pick because Ohio is a swing state. All airlines flying to CLE (and CAK for that matter) will add service for the Convention. But, after the balloons have popped and the confetti has been swept up, all that service will fall off—UA's precipitously.

6 months ago, I would have agreed with your assessment entirely. Now, I'm not so sure...

UA has turned one important corner: It's making money again. This management team has proven themselves to be ridiculously poor strategic thinkers. They fear competition, and they cannot assess the impact of their decisions. The grand strategy has been to cut everything that is below a marginal-RoR line on the detail spreadsheet and then hope that the rising tide will raise the ship faster than unforeseen fallout sinks it.

It has, and so now the playing field _can_ change. I'm not saying it will, but it can. And, in particular, we know that there was a ton of misinformation and conflicting stories told during the de-hubbing of CLE, specifically because the goals were to cut the 2nd-tier hub inventory and get giant blocks of RJ45 flights and overall capacity off the operating budget quickly. CLE was doomed the day the merger went through, even if it had been the MOST objectively-profitable hub in the system at the time.

So let's assume that UA doesn't fall back into the red in the next 18 months. It's behind DL in several key areas, but may (or may not) be ahead of AA as their merger completes.

There is money to be made in CLE, both before and after the RNC. Maybe not monopoly-pricing money like CLE-BOS was before recent days, but market demand is its own indicator. If previous management wasn't lying about CLE being consistently profitable, then an airline coming out of a major re-trenching should be able to find a way to make money there.

I'm not saying they will. But I'm not seeing the same level of blind panic decision-making from management that has persisted for the last several years. Maybe they'll prove to be better growth-managers than turnaround-experts. The economics of CLE, even in a competitive environment, leave a lot of room for opportunity in the business sector, since most of the new competition is LCC.

EDIT: Also remember that UA is stuck paying CLE $1M per month for Terminal D through 2027. On the whole, that's not an insignificant factor in computing the overall economics of operating flights here. Smart money would suggest that UA would live with a reduced (but not negative) PRASM target from CLE, compared to the system overall, when the alternative is a guaranteed-negative cashflow to the city. Completing a death-spiral in CLE and ceding all revenue opportunities to other carriers would be suicidal unless the planes they yank could clear better than current revenue+$1M/month elsewhere -- a pretty daunting challenge.

Cle-Las Record
 

5/3/15 Record number of one day non-stops Cle to Las - 7 today

United 3 739,738,739
Frontier 2 320,320
Swest 1 73W
Spirit 1 320

Un-biased counterpoint: "data"

http://www.transtats.bts.gov/airport...Name=Cleveland, OH: Cleveland-Hopkins International&carrier=FACTS

I'm not 100% sure what you're intending to convey here as fact...? CLE was de-hubbed. It's pretty clear that traffic was going to decrease.

I'm equally not sure that this data has the granularity to make any broad sweeping statements, but since arrivals decreased 15.3% and departures decreased 15.1% -- that would seem to indicate that O&D departures from CLE, excluding connecting traffic, remained pretty much the same, or increased slightly. CLE's overall economic output has been growing consistently since 2010, which would imply a growing market for air service. *shrug*

Just trying to educate a fellow FTer ;) that's all

Especially the somewhat ludicrous claim that there is zero intersection between ex-UA flyers and those pax flying to BOS and other ex-UA markets

How about looking at a normal day?
After Tuesday, there is only one daily UA nonstop, except Memorial Sat/Mon when there are 2.

record
 

the point is it was a record for one day 7 and will remain for a long time

Not sure was a one day record anyway. In its profitable (at least before Jeff started spinning tales) CLE hub heyday, CO had as many as 5 daily CLE-LAS non-stops including at least one 757. Didn't HP/US have LAS non-stops when they had a LAS hub?

The point is that CLEVELAND [area of course] has a lot of people that like to go to vegas. Prices have been lower than ever for leisure destinations driven by ULCC which has/will spur air traffic. Of course the dehubbing has been terrible for those of us who do business and want direct flights. That will not be fixed, but total o/d should go up due to ulcc.

I connected from LAS last tues and the SW flight had 98/143 IIRC. Great connection to/from points west on SW.

I'm hoping Jet Blue does CLE-RSW nonstop by next winter. I'm not sold on Frontier - always changing the schedule - lots of bad press about operations and a terrible website. UA was stupid to cut the CLE-RSW flights, always full IME with plenty of paid F and a well monied crowd on that route. SW Florida has a huge Ohio population.