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What did United lose its last domestic non-hub mainline flight?

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What did United lose its last domestic non-hub mainline flight?

 
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Old Dec 23, 2011, 10:36 am
  #1  
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What did United lose its last domestic non-hub mainline flight?
Looking at the old UA flight schedule out of SEA (with destinations like HNL, ANC, JFK, OAK, SMF) got me thinking: gosh, whatever happened to domestic focus cities?

I took a quick look at the narrowbody schedule for Dec. 2011 (http://www.unitedcargo.com/ShowFiles...ember_2011.pdf) and filtered out flights that are to or from DEN/SFO/LAX/IAD/ORD. That leaves only one flight, EWR-SXM, which UA just recently picked up from CO. There are no other mainline narrowbody airplanes flying from a non-hub to a non-hub.

(The widebody schedule of course lists a bunch of interesting continuation flights, some of which are for sale, like BAH-KWI, some of which are not, like OGG-KOA).

Aside from GUM-HNL, when did UA lose its last domestic non-hub to non-hub mainline flight? What was it?
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Old Dec 23, 2011, 11:12 am
  #2  
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Originally Posted by mherdeg
Looking at the old UA flight schedule out of SEA (with destinations like HNL, ANC, JFK, OAK, SMF) got me thinking: gosh, whatever happened to domestic focus cities?

I took a quick look at the narrowbody schedule for Dec. 2011 (http://www.unitedcargo.com/ShowFiles...ember_2011.pdf) and filtered out flights that are to or from DEN/SFO/LAX/IAD/ORD. That leaves only one flight, EWR-SXM, which UA just recently picked up from CO. There are no other mainline narrowbody airplanes flying from a non-hub to a non-hub.

(The widebody schedule of course lists a bunch of interesting continuation flights, some of which are for sale, like BAH-KWI, some of which are not, like OGG-KOA).

Aside from GUM-HNL, when did UA lose its last domestic non-hub to non-hub mainline flight? What was it?
Dunno when, but I would guess SEA/PDX.
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Old Dec 23, 2011, 11:27 am
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I'm guessing one of the last mainline non-hub flights was TUS-PHX, which UA operated with 757s and A320s as a tag to IAD-PHX as recently as 3 years ago. Certainly more recently than mainline SEA-PDX.
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Old Dec 23, 2011, 1:18 pm
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With 8 hubs, do you really need focus cities?

When DEN/CLE are dehubbed (to something like LAX), you might see domestic non-hub mainline flights.
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Old Dec 23, 2011, 1:55 pm
  #5  
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Originally Posted by mduell
When DEN/CLE are dehubbed
Wasn't DoJ approval contingent on keeping CLE as a hub?
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Old Dec 23, 2011, 2:36 pm
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Originally Posted by mduell
With 8 hubs, do you really need focus cities?

When DEN/CLE are dehubbed (to something like LAX), you might see domestic non-hub mainline flights.
Bringing CLE up to LAX levels would be an improvement. For example, LAX has flights to SYD and HNL. With CLE, you're lucky to make it to SDF.

I would be surprised to see CLE levels get much worse; the flights are O&D to a much greater extent than other hub cities and have high yields (leaving out the EAS routes which don't cost CO anything anyway). There are few flights mainline flights out of CLE that aren't to hubs, and there are no widebody flights at all.
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Old Dec 23, 2011, 3:27 pm
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Originally Posted by Joshua
There are few flights mainline flights out of CLE that aren't to hubs, and there are no widebody flights at all.
A 737 is a CLE widebody.
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Old Dec 23, 2011, 3:29 pm
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Originally Posted by channa
A 737 is a CLE widebody.
Now the 737 service in Asia makes total sense
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Old Dec 23, 2011, 6:56 pm
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Originally Posted by channa
A 737 is a CLE widebody.
Just a few years back we had CLE-LHR!
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Old Dec 23, 2011, 7:42 pm
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The last flight had to be the SJU-STT route. That went away within the last few months, IIRC.
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Old Dec 23, 2011, 10:22 pm
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Originally Posted by mahasamatman
Wasn't DoJ approval contingent on keeping CLE as a hub?
I don't think so, IIRC (and PLEASE don't hold me to it) there might be some sort of state or county tax break (or maybe even a penalty) at risk if CLE gets below some sort of volume.
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Old Dec 23, 2011, 11:38 pm
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Originally Posted by cmhua777
The last flight had to be the SJU-STT route. That went away within the last few months, IIRC.
*Bingo*

But will it be back? I believe it is a seasonal flight.
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Old Dec 24, 2011, 12:26 am
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lol nevermind...I was gonna metnion GUM-HNL after seeing the SJU STT mentioned as quasi domestic, but the OP had already mentioned that!
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Old Dec 24, 2011, 12:36 am
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Originally Posted by Starman
I'm guessing one of the last mainline non-hub flights was TUS-PHX, which UA operated with 757s and A320s as a tag to IAD-PHX as recently as 3 years ago. Certainly more recently than mainline SEA-PDX.
I don't ever remember that route in my life (well, in the last 10 years of me flying UA)
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Old Dec 24, 2011, 1:42 am
  #15  
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Originally Posted by mahasamatman
Wasn't DoJ approval contingent on keeping CLE as a hub?
I don't know, but the promise I heard was some percentage of current flights for a couple years from the legal merger date... tick tock.

Originally Posted by Joshua
Bringing CLE up to LAX levels would be an improvement. For example, LAX has flights to SYD and HNL. With CLE, you're lucky to make it to SDF.
LAX only has those flights due to geography and O&D traffic. If CLE had either of those, it would have more substantial flights.
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