Hub Sizes

RowUnderDCA

Veteran
Oct 6, 2002
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Hey, guys. According to Eclat statistics for 2003. They've been featured in the Daily this week and last.

U's operation at PHL offers more seats than CO's operation at EWR, more departures and more 'onboard pax' Am I wrong to be surprised at this. Well, it's close.

Also, in 2003, U at PIT was about 3 times the size of CO at CLE.

I've got stats for UAL, AMR, DAL and NWA as well.

It looks like DAL at CVG was about 25% larger than U at PIT.

just observations.
 
I'm surprised that PHL is bigger than EWR considering the high O&D and much much bigger variety of destinations CO serves from EWR.

CLE doesnt surprise me... it doesnt seem to be a very large hub. CVG is the monster RJ hub. I wonder if theres room for a mirror operation by U at PIT. Its interesting to see the types of cities that Comair/DL serves from there, makes me wonder why US hasnt tried to reach into the midwest more.
 
Light Years said:
CLE doesnt surprise me... it doesnt seem to be a very large hub.
CAL runs about 50 mainline and 200 rj departures a day in CLE. As a hub, it's very much sized to the CLE O&D market with the local market representing over half their traffic. The operation is nicely suited to the needs of the business community and the presence of LUV and others keeps most fares below the oxygen-required level. According to a recently retired CAL board member, CLE is somewhat (but not hugely) profitable for CAL

CLE and STL (similar, slightly smaller operation by AMR) probably represent what PIT will look like next October.
 
Light Years said:
I'm surprised that PHL is bigger than EWR considering the high O&D and much much bigger variety of destinations CO serves from EWR.

.
I'm surprised by EWR as well. Then again, remember that the New York area has at least three major airports. PHL has one.
 
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Well, this is for the 12 months ending September 2003, not for CY 2003, but U at PHL experienced larger drops from the previous 12 month period than did CO at EWR, suggesting that U's PHL has been larger than CO's EWR.

HMMMM.... maybe SAS will move its CPH flight from EWR to PHL, or maybe move its CPH flight to JFK and let U fly to CPH from PHL.
 
I suspect the difference is connecting traffic. The older data I have (year ended March 31, 2003) shows that PHL had 1/3 less O & D than EWR but total enplanements were about equal (PHL was slightly less for that period).

Here's the data for that period:

PHL
O & D - 6,163,060
Total outbound enplanements - 5,748,257
Outbound ASMs (000) - 7,303,536
Outbound Seats - 9,558,619

EWR
O & D - 9,212,310
Total outbound enplanements - 5,335,771
Outbound ASMs (000) - 9,757,327
Outbound Seats - 7,651,417

Jim
 
Is this just Mainline or the Airline in general. Alot of CO Mainline flights, have been switched to LARGER aircraft supported by JetExpress.........
 
Hope,

I really can't say. CO's EWR info has a separate section for their express operation (but doesn't say if it's included in the other numbers or not) while U's PHL shows that info as "not available" in the data I have.

Jim

PS, here's the EWR info (pdf file) for the period I mentioned:
 
If you'd like to compare the data with our PHL hub (again, for the year ending 3/31/03), here is that info - still pdf file:

Jim
 
BoeingBoy said:
I suspect the difference is connecting traffic. The older data I have (year ended March 31, 2003) shows that PHL had 1/3 less O & D than EWR but total enplanements were about equal (PHL was slightly less for that period).

Here's the data for that period:

PHL
O & D - 6,163,060
Total outbound enplanements - 5,748,257
Outbound ASMs (000) - 7,303,536
Outbound Seats - 9,558,619

EWR
O & D - 9,212,310
Total outbound enplanements - 5,335,771
Outbound ASMs (000) - 9,757,327
Outbound Seats - 7,651,417

Jim
BoeingBoy-

Your suspicion would be completely correct. You can see that from the information in the "Domestic Nonstop Segment Summary" for both carriers' hubs:

Transferring Passengers @ EWR: 763,326
Transferring Passengers @ PHL: 2,845,781

If you compare those numbers to total enplanements, you can see that CO's connecting traffic at EWR was 14.3% of the total, while US's was 49.5%.

So it's not surprising that US offers more seats from PHL; in fact, it's a bit disappointing given that trying to fill that capacity with connecting traffic is often done with deeply discounted fares. And the loads on some of the heaviest domestic routes look appalling; with BOS, PIT, PVD, ORD, MHT, ALB, and BUF all between 50 and 60 percent.
 
sfb,

"with BOS, PIT, PVD, ORD, MHT, ALB, and BUF all between 50 and 60 percent"

Interesting list of cities....notice anything about them except one?

Except for PIT, we compete for connecting traffic with Southwest (thru BWI) for connecting traffic to/from all these cities (BOS is covered by WN with PVD & MHT). Unisys, in one of their Scorecards, did an analysis of the WN effect on our connecting traffic at PHL and it was significant.

Jim
 
The PIT loads might be somewhat misleading, as there have to be flights in there to reposition aircraft and connecting pax that would not otherwise exist without having the two hubs.

In other words, you might only really need 3 or 4 PHL-PIT daily without two hubs, so the 50 to 60 % on that route may be somewhat misleading.
 
RowUnderDCA said:
Hey, guys. According to Eclat statistics for 2003. They've been featured in the Daily this week and last.

U's operation at PHL offers more seats than CO's operation at EWR, more departures and more 'onboard pax' Am I wrong to be surprised at this. Well, it's close.

Also, in 2003, U at PIT was about 3 times the size of CO at CLE.

I've got stats for UAL, AMR, DAL and NWA as well.

It looks like DAL at CVG was about 25% larger than U at PIT.

just observations.
No offense to those who live and work in PHL, but US should have
thrown in the towel long ago, reduced PHL service to mini-hub
status and concentrated more emphasis on PIT as the premiere
connecting hub. No matter what they attempt to do in PHL, it will
never be successful (and WN will make sure of it). Why can't US
make PHL a mini-hub with more point to point flying for all of the
O&D traffic that supposedly makes it a better hub than PIT? If
your O&D traffic is higher in PHL, would that not make the hub
LESS efficient by taking seats away from the connecting traffic?
PIT is true hub in all the sense of the word. There is rarely an
ATC or WX delay, the airport is customer friendly, and the employees
are much more friendly than in PHL. Believe it or not, given the
opportunity to connect in PIT, CLT, or PHL, many of our DM members
actually will pay more to avoid PHL. What does that say? US Airways
senior managment have stuck with PHL and tried for over 10 years
to make it work efficiently. It does not work that way, nor will it
ever. Time to move the hub to PIT and make PHL an East Coast
mini-hub to FL and the Left Coast. IMO, PHL is the wrong place
to have the hub.
 
I must agree with spin doc.

US air needs to utilize the Pittsburgh hub and move all of its connecting traffic to Pittsburgh which is a more efficient hub.

Although after listening to the conference call this morning it sounds like they will be moving a number of mainline jets to Philly, DCA, LGA and BOS. I think those mainline jets will be coming from Pittsburgh.

Time will tell.
 
SpinDoc said:
No offense to those who live and work in PHL, but US should have
thrown in the towel long ago, reduced PHL service to mini-hub
status and concentrated more emphasis on PIT as the premiere
connecting hub. No matter what they attempt to do in PHL, it will
never be successful (and WN will make sure of it). Why can't US
make PHL a mini-hub with more point to point flying for all of the
O&D traffic that supposedly makes it a better hub than PIT? If
your O&D traffic is higher in PHL, would that not make the hub
LESS efficient by taking seats away from the connecting traffic?
PIT is true hub in all the sense of the word. There is rarely an
ATC or WX delay, the airport is customer friendly, and the employees
are much more friendly than in PHL. Believe it or not, given the
opportunity to connect in PIT, CLT, or PHL, many of our DM members
actually will pay more to avoid PHL. What does that say? US Airways
senior managment have stuck with PHL and tried for over 10 years
to make it work efficiently. It does not work that way, nor will it
ever. Time to move the hub to PIT and make PHL an East Coast
mini-hub to FL and the Left Coast. IMO, PHL is the wrong place
to have the hub.
Well... I think the traditional logic goes something like this... and I am making up numbers...

If there are, on average, 300 pax per day PHL to LAX, then you could on a point-to-point basis and assuming you are the only airline in the market, fly 2 A320's and fulfill demand. However, if you are not the only airline in the market, let's say you get 1/2 the market because the other 1/2 of the people go for cheaper fares or more convienient departure times, or what ever, now you have 2 50% load A320 flights. So then you cut a flight, to try to get your 150 people on your one A320. Problem is that some of them find one flight inconvienient and you lose more pax.

Conversely, if you offer 5 PHL-LAX A320's a day, you are more likely to carry more of those 300 people as, you probably have more convienient departure times, plenty of low-fare seats etc. However, with no flow pax, you only get 60 pax per flight if all 300 choose US Airways... Thats a 42% load factor... You can downgrade the flights to 319, but that is a load factor 50%. So, in order to capture the maximum amount of local traffic, you need to offer more flights than the city pair can support. The only way to support that level of service are the connections, which bring up the load factor to 75-80%.

If US Airways were to attempt your suggestion, chances are they would lose a great deal of market share. The question is, if they do lose that market share (offer two flights instead of five), will those two flights be profitable? Maybe yes, maybe no, depending on the "switching" factor. I assumed 1/2 of the people went away... If that is only 1/3 or 1/4, then maybe your idea makes sense. If the switching facor is 3/4, then it means the end of USAirways in that market.

Your plan could potentially work, to make US Airways profitable... but it comes at the expense of market share. Traditionally, the majors don't like to give up market share, and operate at a loss to protect it (Not saying this is a good idea, it just is).

Furthermore, your idea presumably makes PIT cheaper per passenger (spead the fixed costs per pax over more pax means that fixed cost per pax declines). Whether or not this makes PIT more competitive is a different story... If the cost to take a pax through PIT declines from $8/head to $6/head, CLT is still way ahead of the game at $3/head. Presumably they looked at this during the whole "We might close PIT phase"
 

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