As AA continues to lose money, and the economy continues to be in a slump, everyday I have an ever growing feeling that they are going to abandon the STL hub. I live here and there has been several articles in the newspaper suggesting that STL is underperforming, but then again, I''ve heard on here that its the most profitable hub (which I find hard to believe). Losing OGG, cutting back LGW(soon), cutting back JAX, it just gives me a bad feeling......Any input on how the hub has been performing or insight would be appreciated.
First, cut out the fearmongering. Secondly, the reductions for LGW out of STL don''t appear to be any different than some of the other cutbacks because of the war. Thirdly, OGG is transferring to ORD and that has been planned for awhile. The STL hub is holding its own I''d say. Outperforming the other hubs in a lot of ways including ontime. Financially, none of the hubs are performing the way they should. Hopefully, this war will be over soon and then folks in the armed services will be home soon and the nation''s economy will head in the right directions. eolson is right, we are busy in STL with psgrs.
It’s about this “hub†stuff. I really don’t know as much as a lot of people about this, but it somewhat reminds me of the story about a chain being only as strong as its weakest link.
Would it not be just as true that a hub depends on the strength of each and every spoke to perform the job for which it was designed?
Which brings us to the one spoke, with which I am slightly familiar. That would be between Los Angeles and St. Louis, one of the earliest routes to be pioneered in aviation. You will probably find that the passenger loads have consistently been some of the highest in the industry.
Having said this, maybe there is nothing wrong with the hub in STL. Quite possibly some of the spokes require a bit of adjustment.
Financially, STL is at a natural disadvantage since it has a relatively high proportion of low-yielding connecting traffic. Combine that with the fact that its local traffic has a relatively high degree same-airport overlap with Southwest, and you have a difficult revenue story.
I have mentioned on this board before that the financial success of STL cannot be measured by looking at STL alone. One of the primary benefits of acquiring the STL hub was the ability to divert connecting traffic from ORD to STL, and give our ORD operation the ability to gain more local market share from United without adding flights/gates. Given the situation that United is in right now, I think the STL hub is going to help us a great deal in ORD.
Across our system, we operate routes that have significant postive effects on the rest of our network even though their individual income statements do not look favorable. Any STL markets that carry large amounts of connecting traffic fall into that category.
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On 3/25/2003 8:27:00 PM eolesen wrote:
After spending three hours there yesterday, there certainly wasn''t a shortage of passengers...
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Same thing here in NY. We had a meeting on Monday, the guys from BOS and SJU had a hard time getting here, the Boston guys went USAIR and the SJU guys went into EWR because all the JFK flights were full. So, why arent we charging more? Oh yea, got to wait until the long term concessions are in place.
