That is the problem. This management team is concerned about the short run only. Merge today, sell/merge tomorrow, walk away with millions, long-term future be damned.
This is why the pulldowns in service are dangerous to the sucess of an airline. You can apply game theory to to the situation in a simple form to see why it is a poor idea to mass a majority of your flights in one or two stations.
If most of the pieces of your operation are ramrodded through one city and all hell breaks loose at that station (or, in the case of US, one airspace corridor), the rest of the operation suffers. Strategic placement of flights based on several factors would minimize or mitigate major meltdowns during malevolent meteorological events or massive traffic flow issues. (Love that alliteration, Prince!)
Consider the following:
--Using PIT to concentrate Express flying in the Northeast greatly allieviates congestion along the Atlantic corridor from BOS to DCA. Those stations can be fed from PIT with larger aircraft to maximize passengers and reduce air traffic to BOS, LGA, JFK, EWR, PHL, BWI, IAD and DCA.
--Using PHL for large International flights to Europe again maximizes aircraft use. The Shuttle is key here, because the cities mentioned above can feed PHL directly without clogging up the airspace unnecessarily.
--CLT is the perfect start point for Latin American and Caribbean flying because of geography. Feed it in the same way as PHL, and concentrate the Express flying into CLT by containing it to the Southeast, as GNV or TLH to CLT makes more sense than ELM or SYR to CLT. Again, a savings in ATC nightmares. Further south might be better, but we all saw how the ball was dropped with FLL.
--PHX is already in excellent position to handle a West Coast operation. There is a lot of empty space in between cities, so handling that traffic and concentrating connecting traffic to large East Coast cities for connections makes far more sense than, say, LAS to CMH or BUF.
--LAS is a unique animal. A playground for (mostly) adults in the middle of a desert that attracts LOTS of people. It should be fed with a constant flow of large aircraft from large US stations.
--US needs one more station on the west coast (read: very close to the Pacific) to make it even slightly viable to handle Asian destinations. If fed properly from, say, PHX, it could easily handle moving high yield traffic to the Far East. Perhaps PDX or SEA would be decent choices.
But before any of this sort of thing happens, Tempe must
SERIOUSLY evaluate not only the route structure and the cost of doing business at these airports, but also how the passengers perceive their treatment on US flights and how the company works with its work groups to create a decent flying experience.
And outfoxing the horrendous ATC situation in the Northeast is much better than sitting on your hands waiting for change that may never come.