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US Airways cancels Delta acquisition


monsoon

Which Southern Hub will they Keep?  

93 members have voted

  1. 1. Which Southern Hub will they Keep?

    • Atlanta Hartsfield
      51
    • Charlotte Douglas
      9
    • Both Hubs will remain
      33


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I would see Charlotte keep most of it routes, just at a much lower volume of flights, with them "banked" together to feed the existing Carribean Service. I think BofA and Wachovia would subsidize the London flight, but Charlotte would lose the Frankfurt Flight. It might keep Lufthansa to Munich is Delta joins Star Alliance, but can pretty much count out any new international service until the city's population double's in size.

I also think that a lot of small airports would lose their sevice, like Fayettville, Florence, Johnson City, etc. The new airline wouldn't want to waste a valuable Atlanta gate there, and Charlotte probably wouldn't have enough volume to serve these places with reduced flights.

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Here's a link to a pretty thorough CNN article on the subject. There are so many things aligning against this merger (not the least of which is that Delta wants nothing to do with US), I don't think we have anything to worry about. Of course, the comments from Parker are predictable... "We'll keep existing hubs! Lower fares for everyone!" (through reduced competition?? Sure, Dougie, sure...).

http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/15/news/compa...dex.htm?cnn=yes

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While I wouldn't be as opposed to NWA, don't they have the oldest jets in the country of any mainline carrier? I was under the impression that the cost of bringing their fleet up to date is well beyond any financial benefit of acquiring them. That said, there hubs have little overlap, and I wouldn't mind seeing a KLM jet parked at CLT.

I've heard this from USAirways employees a lot, but it completely misses the fact that the Triangle did not suffer at all from the loss of it's American Airlines Hub. If anything the area is growing at a faster rate than the Charlotte Metro, Wake county is set to surpass Mecklenburg in number of people, and they continue to get endless business re-locations. Nashville is doing quite well despite the loss of its hub too.

Based on that, I think the "value" of a hub is way overstated.

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I have been reading over all the matieral at usairways.com concerning the merger, and have listened the Doug Parker's webcast. In all the matieral they have stated over and over and over again they would be keeping both ATL and CLT hubs. Now what exactly the details are of that we won't know till after a merger happens. If it does.

I don't know that ATL has the capacity to take on an additional 20M passengers if the CLT hub were to close.

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From CNN

But Parker admitted that some of the major hubs now served by the two airlines could see cuts as the networks are combined. "It's unclear at this point ... how much each hub would have in terms of service," he said. "We'll have a series of complementary hubs that make sense."

He said the Charlotte, N.C., hub of US Air would remain, as would Delta's Salt Lake City hub, despite their relative proximity to Delta's hub in Atlanta and the Phoenix hub of US Air, respectively.

But overall US Air said a merged carrier would still serve all the cities now reached by either airline, offering passengers a larger network at lower cost.

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This is a smoke screen attempt to get Northwest Airlines. Delta and US Airways would merge together about as well as oil and vinegar. I expect Continental or maybe even United to make a counter offer for Delta in the near future. US Airways will then set it's sights on Northwest. I hope I am right otherwise CLT is toast. Atleast the 4th runway is in it's early stages because if this merger happens CLT can save some money and hault construction. There will be no need for it.

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I wonder if this will ever pan out. Delta is now in play. I am sure the Board of Directors for Continental in Houston are sitting around the table right now putting together an offer for Delta. The wild cards are American and United. Other obstacles are government approval. I'm sure US or DL would have to divest one of their shuttles at the very least.

Logistically this merger does not make much sense to me. Lots of overlap: JFK/Philadelphia/Cincinnati,

Charlotte/Atlanta, and Phoenix/Las Vegas/Salt Lake City. The fleet types do not have much in common either. While there is some overlap in equipment types its my understanding that the engines are not the same type. Another aspect is combining heavily unionized US Airways and Delta, which is mostly non-union. On the managerial side of things, US Airways is America West with a new name. The show is being run buy the America West folks. The America West/US Airways merger is not even complete yet

and they are wanting to tackle a merger of this magnitude. A nightmare waiting to happen. I hope they have not bitten off more that they can chew.

Dave Parker, CEO of US Airways states both hubs(CLT &ATL) will remain. I cant see how a dual CLT/ATL hub would be profitable. If this does happen I dont think CLT will ever see the level of air service it has today. That would be a huge loss for Charlotte.

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I've heard this from USAirways employees a lot, but it completely misses the fact that the Triangle did not suffer at all from the loss of it's American Airlines Hub. If anything the area is growing at a faster rate than the Charlotte Metro, Wake county is set to surpass Mecklenburg in number of people, and they continue to get endless business re-locations. Nashville is doing quite well despite the loss of its hub too.

Based on that, I think the "value" of a hub is way overstated.

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Would a "focus city" be basically a smaller hub, that is, like US Airways hub in Charlotte might have been 5 or 10 years ago? Or is it a major downgrade back to what we haven't seen here in decades?

The letter indicates that there wouldn't be job cuts, but would jobs have to shift to other cities if we became a focus city rather than a hub?

I guess I've always thought Charlotte was a small hub, because US Airways was a small airline. I'm trying to understand whether a focus city of a huge airline is significantly smaller than a hub of a small airline.

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I have been reading over all the matieral at usairways.com concerning the merger, and have listened the Doug Parker's webcast. In all the matieral they have stated over and over and over again they would be keeping both ATL and CLT hubs. Now what exactly the details are of that we won't know till after a merger happens. If it does.

I don't know that ATL has the capacity to take on an additional 20M passengers if the CLT hub were to close.

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Would a "focus city" be basically a smaller hub, that is, like US Airways hub in Charlotte might have been 5 or 10 years ago? Or is it a major downgrade back to what we haven't seen here in decades?

The letter indicates that there wouldn't be job cuts, but would jobs have to shift to other cities if we became a focus city rather than a hub?

I guess I've always thought Charlotte was a small hub, because US Airways was a small airline. I'm trying to understand whether a focus city of a huge airline is significantly smaller than a hub of a small airline.

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The bottom line is they are not going to save any money by keeping all routes and all hubs operating as they are today. Expect if this goes through, they will make significant cutbacks to end duplication. Routes, Jobs, Airplanes are all going to go. This also means Atlanta will get a lot larger and Charlotte will get a lot smaller.
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The letter said something like the same number of employees on 10% fewer planes. If Charlotte just got a 10% reduction, I think that'd be bad but survivable. But if the 10% of the grand total of planes were cut entirely in Charlotte, then we'd be toast. Is that what people think is happening?

Otherwise, just incremental trimmings here and there, even as much as 10% wouldn't much different than we've already suffered here before over the years.

If they were to trim 30%, it seems somewhat reasonable to expect that another airline, like SW or JetBlue, take up some of those gates considering the high growth of the city, low cost and high capacity of the airport, and higher prices here?

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Dub, if you want an example of a focus city, just look at what's happened to Pittsburgh. They went from being a major spoke in the USAirways wheel to losing a ton of direct flights since that airport was no longer needed as a connecting point in the network. The traffic in PIT now reflects the true needs of the city, which is obviously a lot less than what they had before they were downgraded in status. Oh, and on the network map in back of the in-flight magazine, PIT went from a gold star to a red dot. We'd face a similar demotion, I'm sure of it.

And in regard to the "combining of numbers" when looking at current DL and US capacity in Atlanta and Charlotte, unfortunately (for us), a combined US/DL would have to dump TONS of East Coast flights in order to ram this through the Dept. of Justice, and even that is doubtful. It isn't simply a matter of adding today's Atlanta numbers plus Charlotte numbers since there would more than likely be close to what Delta has currently in ATL (with a possible slight increase) when the dust is settled and they've divested overlapping routes.

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Trust me, the only reason Doug Parker is saying CLT will remain a hub after the merger is not to cause too much anxiety or a revolt against US Airways up until the deal is done if it ever will be. If that day ever does come, one of the first things they will do is axe CLT for a much larger and better operation in ATL.

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Marginal cost of capacity would be one. If extra capacity costs much less in CLT, they'll keep the planes going to Charlotte. Some passengers could be easily shifted to use existing capacity in Atlanta. But adding capacity to Atlanta would seem much more expensive to adding capacity in Charlotte.

Even if Atlanta expands, there is still a limit to the capacity of the airspace. Charlotte would be wide open in comparison.

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