GSP flyer

I remember going through BWI's Concourse D and having a really eerie feeling. You could definitely tell that the place had been a big time hub for Piedmont and USAir back in the 80s. By the time I traveled through it was a fairly empty shell (just a few US, F9, and FL departures).

There's also RDU's Terminal C (which is showing signs of life again as an AA Focus City), SJC's Terminal A (similar story, former AA hub), STL Concourse D(AA again).

I shudder to think about what PIT will look like after US Airways completes it's screwing over of that city (40-50 empty gates, what a waste).

Rumordly DL's Terminal E at DFW will undergo a similar process.

ATL's Concourse C still reminds one of Eastern (although it's now FL's main hub). DEN's concourse A was designed to be CO's Western Hub (now Frontier's hub).

Boofer

A couple weeks ago, I flew TZ to LAS from IND (my home airport). While most ATA flights leave from IND concourse C, this flight, on a 757, left out of concourse D. D is the US Airways concourse, when US used to have a mini-hub at IND. Now, it's only about half used. The walk over to D takes you past several empty ticketing couters as well. It really made me stop and think about Indy's construction of a new midfield airport to replace the current one - with so much unused space, and no airline looking to establish new hubs anytime soon, what's the need for a whole new airport?

Last week, on a trip to MCI, I had a couple hours to wait before my NW flight left. I took a stroll through terminal C. More than half of this terminal is empty. I know US Airways used to have a mini-hub at MCI too, and I wondered if this was the terminal they used, although they use A now.

I think this is all evidence of how the negatives of the hub/spoke system are starting to outweigh the positives. I see the trend toward "focus cities" like AA @ RDU, NW @ MKE, IND, and GRR, etc., is the first move toward a dismantling of the hub-and-spoke system in favor of old-style point-to-point routings. It will be driven by the airlines' (or rather, airline investors') need to free up capital and not have it tied up in hub airport facilities.

GSP flyer

Didn't PI also have hubs at DAY and SYR?

Some others that I can recall are GSO (CAL Lite), LAX T1 (former PSA/US hub), COS (Western Pacific), BNA Concourse C (and D?) (AA).

JerryFF

While Terminal A certainly was an AA hub and AA has cut back significantly, the terminal, fortunately for those of us who fly out of SJC, does not feel like a ghost hub, since all of AA's cancelled flights and more have been replaced by WN.

WHBM

There are a surprising number of abandoned US airline hubs. A few that might raise some memories are :

National at Miami and Houston
Braniff at Dallas-Ft Worth
Pan Am at JFK, Miami, Houston and Berlin, Germany
TWA at JFK and St Louis
Eastern at Atlanta, Miami and Charlotte
United at Seattle
Northwest at Seattle
Delta at Portland and Frankfurt, Germany
US Airways at Baltimore, Tampa, Indianapolis and LAX.
American at Raleigh, Nashville and San Jose
Continental at Denver

Finally, a whole lot at Kansas City. I recall TWA, Braniff, Eastern, US Air and Vanguard (at least) having a go. Why does Kansas not work ?

GSP flyer

MCI doesn't work because of the security set up. It's basically similar to DFW except the terminals are much narrowere and designed with O & D traffic in mind.

Some of these are less noticible than others because they simply became hubs for someone else. Eastern's ATL hub was picked up by DL and FL. EA's SJU and MIA operations are now AA's domain. Braniff's DFW hole was filled by AA and DL.

Athena53

Southwest is adding a lot of space in MCI so it won't be quite as much of a ghost town. Having flown in and out of DFW a lot and now flying out of MCI as my home airport, I can definitely tell you I prefer DFW. The MCI setup, where there are 3-4 gates clustered on one side of the hall sharing a secured area, is miserable. Once you get into the secured area there are no bathrooms and no food facilities unless you happen to be a member of the relevant airline club, which is within the secured area but not accessible if you're not flying out of that cluster of gates. At least now they have wireless but they charge for it.

We love Kansas, but not MCI. The only way to fix it would be to rip it up and start over.

auh2o

T2 at SFO.

BearX220

Terrible place for a hub, but a great place to catch a plane. Last Friday afternoon, running late, I pulled off Route 29 at 5:10, turned my Avis car in at 5:20, got to Terminal C at 5:30 and made my 5:50 NW departure to MSP. There aren't a lot of other airports in the country where I'd have made that flight.

Some prior poster mentioned that Piedmont ran a mini-hub at SYR in the 1980s. It was great. They had little Fokker jets fan out all over New York, New England and south from there, and I once connected through SYR spending a total of 11 minutes on the ground -- didn't even go inside, just ran from one idling plane to another on the tarmac. Can't do that anymore.

GSP flyer

Umm, I think you meant SYR...NY to SYD (Sydney, Australia) with a F-28 would run LGA-CLE-DSM-DEN-LAX-Lots and lots of little Islands-AKL-SYD lol .

BearX220

You are right... correction made above... gee, maybe that's why Piedmont didn't last, selling those BTV-SYD-ALB runs.

ijkh

When we lost DL as a hub it made us cringe and pay with our time to get to Asia. But were baaa acck with NW direct to Japan. I think the US customs and immigration snafus awhile back came into play something like a racial profiling incident brought us down??? not sure.

Next summer we plan to fly direct to FRA on LH our only direct connect to the European world.

SFO-SJC Flyer

At SFO, PSA used the old Concourse A in what was then the South Terminal and now is Terminal #1. The area was always bustling; between 4 and 8 P. M. on Fridays, it was a total madhouse. Now, except for a very few periods during the day, the boarding areas are quiet and almost empty. In a way, it is kind of sad.

GSP flyer

IIRC, Ansett Australia had a large facility at MEL that was empty for awhile. Canadian Airlines had hubs at YVR, YYC, and YYZ (T3 in YYZ's case). BRU must have looked funky after the death of Sabena, and ZRH would have been in a similar situation (although Swiss and SN Brussels have since picked up a lot of that traffic).

WHBM

I think the F28 couldn't make California to Hawaii, so its either up round through Alaska and Japan, or Iceland, Europe and across Asia !