spin88

SWA is not an airline that ultimately will attract high value business travel. Network is diffuse, focused in large part on secondary cities, and with less frequent flights on many routes. Denver and MSP and to a lesser extent SLC, are surrounded by a lot of cities that are large enough to support larger RJ and sometimes Mainline flights (100-300K people) but not large enough to have direct flights to multiple distant hubs. Denver is much better situated than is SLC, and I think it was only held back under UA by being filled with small RJ planes which were the result of traffic going in multiple directions, and into the other networks which offered better connectivity. Consolidation is really the situation that DEN was designed (and built) for, pushing much larger numbers of connecting passengers, allowing larger planes to be flown at lower costs.

Jeff did not like the place since their was competition, and he did not see it's potential, and tried to shift traffic via IAH. I can remember times in 2012-13 when UA was trying to force me to fly to IAH (vs DEN or ORD), then take an ERJ-145 often on a back connection. As a GS I said "hell no" and started flying DL on this flights, found the service much better, and soon I was not a GS, and after that was primarily a Delta passenger.

While I think Kirby does not understand service quality and the impact it has on yields, he (and Oscar who was most direct about it) certainly understands the negative impact of trying to force traffic onto small RJs, and the resulting loss of traffic to other carriers with more comfortable planes, and also have a much better sense of the potential of the PM UA. While UA continues to lag other carriers in financial performance (as in margin, not total profits) they have made up some ground, and I think this is mostly (1) not aiming for 80% OT as "anything more has diminishing returns" and (2) focusing on the right hubs (SFO, DEN, ORD) rather than simply trying to focus on the ex-CO hub the way Jeff did it....

cerealmarketer

DEN had uncompetitive costs - relatively new facility with lots of capex to pay off. UA in 2014 played hard with them and got concessions on the landing fees.

http://business.flydenver.com/pr/DIAPR_140819e.pdf

It was those fees the airlines (not just UA) didn't like.

Since then UA has been able to ramp its potential as a hub with great connecting geography, and a large and growing corporate base, but not so large that it supports a competing airport in the metro to siphon off short haul biz flyers like IAH vs HOU, DFW vs DAL, EWR vs LGA, IAD vs DCA, etc.

Why are CLT and ATL the profit centers for DL and AA...it's the incredibly low fees that let them be a volume play leveraging their great connecting geography, and ability to monopolize a sizable local biz market. It's why DL fights so hard against letting Atlanta build another airport in town.

See slide 5 here for ATL landing fees early in the decade. ORD, IAH, DFW 3x the fees.

http://www.dot.ga.gov/AboutGeorgia/B...ksonUpdate.pdf

bart889

What are those landing fees quoted in? $/plane? $/ton? $/seat? $/pax?

kale73

To the East and Northeast is mostly farmland. If they expand DEN just a few miles to the Southeast, it could ‘absorb’ KFTG and its two existing runways. @:-)

Sykes

Per 1,000 lbs of max gross landing weight.

uastarflyer

So no Polaris lounge as in never (or at least not in the next few years?). Wow that bites for such a major operation.

WineCountryUA

Should not be that much of a surprize as DEN has never shown up on any UA list of proposed PLs. And of the UA hubs or major gateways that have been on the proposed list, DEN has less Polaris activity (but it has been increasing).

nevansm

As noted above, DEN was never scheduled to receive one. However, as I mentioned, I think UA would certainly earn a bit of brownie points if there were some increased services for Polaris customers. There's clearly a ton of Polaris connecting pax, so even some better drinks and food in one of the United Club's would be nice. Other airlines do this at some outstations (foreign airlines generally single-hub). LH provides enhanced service for F pax at various US stations, BA has as well.

FightingIlliniUAL

The real bottleneck at DEN is the people mover and Pena Blvd.

A friend of mine was an advisor to the Airport programming team and he said Airport leadership was advised to connect the people mover with a loop and they refused, in favor of lower upfront cost. Had they built the loop, frequency could easily be ramped up.

steveschow

With a lounge in concourse A does that mean int'l flights to NRT, FRA, LHR, MUC will depart out of A-concourse? Or are the gates over there too small for the 777/787s? I would not be pleased to have more of my domestic flights on narrowbodies shift over the A-gates...

steveschow

My least favorite part of every business trip is the mad rush out of the train trying to get to the escalator first so I don't have to wait behind 100s of loafers who just stand there and clog up the path until literally the next train arrives :-\

If you hit the train at the wrong time of day, the first and last cars are already full of people from C-gates by the time it gets to B (which means a tougher time getting from the middle cars to the escalator).

pseudoswede

I'm also annoyed that they didn't also install walkways between the A/B/C Concourses. Maybe we can ask The Illuminati to open up some of the underground tunnels.

COSPILOT

Thousands of trips doing exactly this, and I would say it’s only a problem 10% of the time. Agree with you and others though that this will only get worse as things grow.

JimInOhio

A-concourse is where INTL arrivals are so the gates are large enough.

bart889

Right now I think the only United A gates are the small commuter jet "walk-up" gates at the far east end of A. Not sure if they will add UA metal to A. Concerning gate capacity, the LH and BA 747s use the A Concourse.