The Buzzards Are Circling
- Thread starter oldcrow
- Start date
mrfish3726
Veteran
- Jul 7, 2004
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BIGSKY
LIKE WHO, bankrupt UniTED? AWA is probably better off right now than UAL. AA, DELTA, CO, NW, SWA, JETBL, and YES even F9 are in a better position than UAL is. It is SOOOOOOOOOO
funny how you UAL folks think that UniTED is the BOMB. It's a bomb alright, falling right out of the bomb bay behind the USAIR NUKE! :down: Kind of like LITTLE BOY and FAT MAN! 
LIKE WHO, bankrupt UniTED? AWA is probably better off right now than UAL. AA, DELTA, CO, NW, SWA, JETBL, and YES even F9 are in a better position than UAL is. It is SOOOOOOOOOO
funny how you UAL folks think that UniTED is the BOMB. It's a bomb alright, falling right out of the bomb bay behind the USAIR NUKE! :down: Kind of like LITTLE BOY and FAT MAN! 
Columbia blue
Advanced
- Aug 20, 2002
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Bigsky said:
Well, AWA got approval for a stock shelf offering to raise $500 million plus a few days ago they renegotiated a loan to give them an extra $35 million. That does'nt include the cash they have onhand...most of which is unrestricted. I'd say they have enough to buy some assets. Plus they could always go to TPG for funds.
TheDog2004
Senior
- Mar 26, 2004
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Southwest is probably licking their chops. They'd LOVE another location in the southeast.
jimntx
Veteran
I don't know about that. Granted Charlotte is a major banking center and Duke Energy is headquartered there, but according to the 2000 Census the population of Charlotte was 540, 828. I'm guessing that is within the city and is not the entire SMSA. However, that is not sufficient population to support a major O&D leisure travel center. Despite some companies best efforts, their employees are not doing business travel on SWA unless absolutely forced to do so. I can't see BofA execs standing around with their boarding cards in hand.
If UAIR goes under...
A major airline, like AA or DL, might add additional flights to CLT from their existing hubs. But, I think Charlotte would experience the loss of most of their non-stop service to most cities in the U.S. As far as International service, I doubt even foreign flag carriers would maintain service to CLT absent a major domestic distribution system there. (AA's hub-ette at RDU is a very special case, and it's only 1 flight a day.)
LCCs might "test the waters" at CLT, but again I think it would be more service to their existing "hubs"--i.e., ATA might put in more flights to MDW or SWA might institute flights to HOU or BWI. Over time as they discovered profitable city pairs with CLT, those might come into play.
If UAIR goes under...
A major airline, like AA or DL, might add additional flights to CLT from their existing hubs. But, I think Charlotte would experience the loss of most of their non-stop service to most cities in the U.S. As far as International service, I doubt even foreign flag carriers would maintain service to CLT absent a major domestic distribution system there. (AA's hub-ette at RDU is a very special case, and it's only 1 flight a day.)
LCCs might "test the waters" at CLT, but again I think it would be more service to their existing "hubs"--i.e., ATA might put in more flights to MDW or SWA might institute flights to HOU or BWI. Over time as they discovered profitable city pairs with CLT, those might come into play.
The area surrounding CLT within a two hour drive has something like 5 million people. (I saw some figures but I can't find them right now so that is from memory) The thing about CLT is it has extremely low costs to operate an airline and is pretty ideally located to work as a hub for a LCC or at least as a very large station. There are a bunch of fortune 500 companies headquartered in CLT as well as the surrounding communities that would support lower fares in droves if they ever got here. Untold numbers of people travel to GSO, RDU, GSP, CAE, and some even to ATL to get lower fares. Undoubtedly CLT would lose a significant number of non-stops but any LCC would do very well there. America West is sitting on the outside right now looking for the first sign of the airline going up for bid and I'd bet you'd see them make an offer and it would make a great fit for their operations.
Just my opinion.
Just my opinion.
MrAeroMan said:
The problem is that CLT only has low costs when there's a hub being operated which is comparable in scale to US's. If CLT loses the 80-90% of its traffic that's just connecting, the remaining 10-20% which is actual CLT O&D has to pick up the slack, and per-passenger costs would probably look more like PIT. That's what's ironic about the company's PIT cutbacks -- they are a vicious circle. The more they cut back flights, the higher the per-passenger costs go, which means they have to cut back even more flights.
CLT traffic is indeed artificially depressed by US's high fares. Low-fare service would probably double (or more) the number of O&D passengers at CLT. Charlotte's metro poulation in 2000 was right at 1.5 million; Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill was a bit under 1.2 million. And yet, in 2002, CLT handled 4.6 million O&D passengers while RDU had just over 7 million, without being a hub (aside from the short-lived JI reincarnation which only had 260,000 passengers) and the "convenience" of non-stop flights to many destinations.
jimntx
Veteran
A large percentage of those people living within 2 hours have closer airports with good service. For instance, Winston-Salem is only 1.5 hours away, but there is no need for people living within an hour of W-S to drive to CLT if they are going to have to connect somewhere anyway--which I think will be the case if UAIR goes away.MrAeroMan said:
The 5 million number seems a little high unless you also include the RDU--which again, has good air service--population which is more like 3 hours by car. Charlotte sits almost in the Appalachian foothills; so west of CLT there are no population centers of note other than Asheville (2003 est. 232,000) until you get across the mountains to Chattanooga.
MrAeroMan said:
I may be wrong, but it seems that you are assuming that the places that the LCCs fly (which you will admit is limited) are the places that CLT O&D passengers want to go. If that were the case, the LCCs would already be in CLT eating UAIR's lunch. As SFB said, if you take away all that connecting traffic that is there only because UAIR created a hub at CLT, there's just not that much traffic left.
jimntx
Veteran
No, but people in Winston-Salem use GSO which is about 30 minutes by car.
WorldTraveler
Corn Field
- Dec 5, 2003
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Oh come on, Jim. Let HP come and sink a bunch of money setting up a hub in CLT. AA and DL are going to expand in US markets regardless of what HP does and WN is coming to town, too. If HP wants to set up a hub in a small market with those kind of competitive dynamics happening, let them go for it.
CLT is a viable city for a medium sized hub but that doesn’t mean any carrier will succeed at setting up a hub there.
CLT is a viable city for a medium sized hub but that doesn’t mean any carrier will succeed at setting up a hub there.
