United At Lax?

[biztraveller29]

Greetings all! (I'm a new poster, but frequent reader of these boards, by the way).

As an Angeleno and United traveller, I was hoping to get any info I could regarding United's plans for LAX. I had thought that LAX as a hub was going away, but as far as I can tell it still is active as a hub (maybe I'm wrong?).

It was always interesting to have two hubs so close together (LAX & SFO), and obviously SFO is currently much more important to United than LAX. Will United turn LAX into basically a "focus city", much like AA uses LAX? Potentially UA could keep LAX a UA Express hub, much like it is an Eagle hub.

I've also read about US Airways moving their ops to T7. I remember when Lufthansa was flying out of T6/7. Any chance of consolidating the Star carriers in T7 again? I know the load would be high, but there could be big advantages in consolidating NZ, LH, ANA, US, etc. in a "Star Terminal".

You guys really look like you're turning the corner, and I've been a loyal United customer for quite a few years (unfortunately don't have status anymore). I hope recovery plans include the ramp-up of additional flights at LAX (I would love to see Auckland come back...)

 

[TravelDude]

Thanks for flying UA! I too agree with you that I hope LAX remains a hub. However, I have no insight.

OK, fellow posters, lets try to see if we can find out a partial game plan.

 

[USFlyer]

Is LAX really a hub in the true sense of the word? It would seem that the high O&D traffic pretty much would support any UA flights there w/o relying on feed.

 

[biztraveller29]

It is/was a hub in a sense that there are connecting passengers, if not true "banks" of flights. Having travelled on United at LAX quite a bit, I know I often run across people changing planes, going to Hawaii, Sydney, Tokyo, and (previously) Auckland.

In addition, there is a fairly large feed of people connecting from PSP, OXN, SBA, SNA, ONT, YUM, etc. on Express, and connecting to mainline flights.

I guess in these days of rolling hubs, what does a "true hub" mean? Certainly there is a lot of O&D, but if LAX is not a hub, it has an awful lot of "non-hub" point to point flying (i.e. LAX-DFW, LAX-LAS, LAX-MEX, LAX-MCO, etc.)