"United Airlines’ (UAL) decision to quit its Cleveland hub this spring—Hopkins International doesn’t rock, apparently—isn’t the first time a major city has lost its bragging rights as an airline base, and it won’t be the last.
Memphis and, to a lesser extent, Cincinnati, have both lost their hub status since Delta Air Lines (DAL) absorbed Northwest and rationalized its network, cutting financially underperforming flights. A similar story played out at Hopkins, a former Continental hub inherited in United’s 2010 merger that hasn’t been profitable for a decade, according to a recent memo (PDF) sent to Cleveland workers by United Chief Executive Officer Jeff Smisek.
A successful hub needs two main ingredients: a large metropolitan area and a dominant position by an airline. Think of Atlanta and Delta, or Houston and United. With the newly minted American Airlines (AAL) behemoth working on its own megamerger with US Airways, other lesser hub cities would be right to grow nervous.
American is run by a core group of executives from US Airways, which dropped Pittsburgh as a base after its long-ago merger with America West Airlines. Highest atop the proverbial wall of worry is Phoenix, a US Airways hub that finds itself at a geographic and competitive disadvantage within the airline’s new network. Geographically, it’s between Dallas/Fort Worth—American’s home airport, and one where it dominates both financially and operationally—and Los Angeles, a huge market that could, under American, become a true hub for the first time."
Bloomberg Businessweek
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Has anyone been affected by this type of airline change-up, for good or for ill?
Bloomberg Businessweek
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Has anyone been affected by this type of airline change-up, for good or for ill?
