HP Management

[Travelpro72]

The last 3 words of your post accurately reflect the worth of your suggestion.
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Well the way I see it, regardless of how the city of Philly cries about airspace problems they will ALWAYS be the little stepchild to NYC and DC airspace. The airport though in the midst of HUGE O&D is in one of the worst areas to have an airport in the country. That is not changing. So why don't US just keep adding flighs and filtering passengers through PHL and slap some paint on the walls. YEP that'll do it. 🙄 I'm not saying PIT is the cure all as much as helping with overflow. but some say a fix is comming. Well who is going to do it? NOBODY as of late can fix that dump. Keep waiting for the miracle....LOL 😉

 

[diogenes]

Why not ditch PHL as a connecting point and expand CLT?

Leave enough of a PHL presence to capture O&D, or operate it as a mini-hub, vis-a-vis LAS/PHX at US West.

There just has to be a study somewhere that accounts for all of the physical constraints at PHL, and suggests the max number of flights that can operate smoothly within those constraints. When accounting for total revenue/costs, that max smooth capacity will likely generate maximum yield, which is the number to keep you eye on (yet US is loathe to reveal).

Sorry, I never saw the wisdom of having three hubs so close together - you're competing with yourself, and one wx system can down two hubs at the same time. Given the current fleet, CLT and PHX as hubs, PIT and LAS as mini-hubs, and focus cities (LGA, DCA, etc.) seem to utilize resources best.

 

[FCYTravis]

Why not ditch PHL as a connecting point and expand CLT?

Because CLT's O&D is terrible, NASCARville notwithstanding. It's a great place to connect Southern US traffic, though - second only to ATL. But no airline can survive connecting people, because connecting yields are horrible in this new era of LCC point-to-point service. As hubs, CLT and PHL complement each other quite well.

Leave enough of a PHL presence to capture O&D, or operate it as a mini-hub, vis-a-vis LAS/PHX at US West.

The Philly metro area is what enables US to operate a major, expanding transatlantic gateway. Pull down the PHL hub and you have to shut down the European service, too. Hasta la vista, 757s. Au revoir, 767s. Auf Wiedersehen, A330s.

It blows my mind how many people don't understand what Doug keeps drilling in during the CrewNews sessions - that PHL is by far the largest revenue generating station in the entire US Airways system. They are not going to abandon it, period. Philly is a gold mine disguised as a tar pit. If they can clean the mess up, US can start printing money.

Look, as a traveler I dislike PHL as much as anyone else. But I have seen marked improvements in the facilities since the merger, and if they can wrangle the ATC issues down a bit it will help a lot. The 500-flight PIT fortress is gone - forever. The hub is never coming back and endlessly harping about it will not change that fact. We can either live in the past or build for the future.

PHL and US Airways will thrive or perish together. That's the new reality.

 

[Jimmy Neutron]

Because CLT's O&D is terrible, NASCARville notwithstanding. It's a great place to connect Southern US traffic, though - second only to ATL. But no airline can survive connecting people, because connecting yields are horrible in this new era of LCC point-to-point service. As hubs, CLT and PHL complement each other quite well.
The Philly metro area is what enables US to operate a major, expanding transatlantic gateway. Pull down the PHL hub and you have to shut down the European service, too. Hasta la vista, 757s. Au revoir, 767s. Auf Wiedersehen, A330s.

It blows my mind how many people don't understand what Doug keeps drilling in during the CrewNews sessions - that PHL is by far the largest revenue generating station in the entire US Airways system. They are not going to abandon it, period. Philly is a gold mine disguised as a tar pit. If they can clean the mess up, US can start printing money.

Look, as a traveler I dislike PHL as much as anyone else. But I have seen marked improvements in the facilities since the merger, and if they can wrangle the ATC issues down a bit it will help a lot. The 500-flight PIT fortress is gone - forever. The hub is never coming back and endlessly harping about it will not change that fact. We can either live in the past or build for the future.

PHL and US Airways will thrive or perish together. That's the new reality.

The part you people don't seem to realize is no-one is saying to bring back the 500+ flight fortress hub of the past back to PIT.....

But there is absolutly no reason to run all connecting traffic through that PHL nightmare...period....

PIT is doing quite well supporting the flights with the more then double the originating traffic that CLT has.... All the flts regularly run full or oversold.....even the so-called seasonal flights were mostly oversold daily...

On top of that there is tons of local originating traffic sent to PHL and CLT to connect to major cities throughout the system...

What needs to happen for this airline to survive long-term is to run an efficient operation and give the customers a pleasant flying experience, two of the main things lacking with the operation as it stands today....

There is no excuse for what our connecting traffic endures in PHL and for those waitng for the fix, dream on it will never ever happen......

Nobody is talking about replacing PHL altogether, just to shed some of the load from the operation by connecting more of the northeast traffic somewhere,anywhere else...It's just common sense....

 

[FCYTravis]

But you can't connect more people through PIT by pulling flights from PHL. It'll just start unraveling the hub banks. So US would have to just overall add capacity by adding additional service through PIT.

The problem with that is, as we all know, US is already critically short of aircraft - where do the planes come from? The capacity expansion/yield depression is also an issue.

Hopefully the E175s will allow for some service expansion at PIT... yes, I know, they're Republic...

 

[BoeingBoy]

But you can't connect more people through PIT by pulling flights from PHL.

Well, someone needs to decide whether PHL is a success because of the O&D traffic or if it's really the connecting traffic that makes PHL a success (hence the need for all those connecting banks).

I guess I could do a search to find out how many times it's been said that PHL can't be touched because of the O&D traffic it has.

But when the discussion turns to moving some of the connecting traffic, it's suddenly verboten to touch the banks that make connections possible.

So somebody decide - how many banks does it take to make PHL a success? Or is it just a case of "That's what the boss says so it must be right."

Jim

 

[FCYTravis]

I think the point more or less is, you need a balanced mix of O&D *and* connecting traffic to sustain a hub.

Think of it this way: ICT is a great place for a hub geographically - so why not connect everyone through there?

Conversely, LAX has O&D out the wazoo, so why is it that nobody's made it a full-on connecting hub?

Of course, it's obvious... ICT has no O&D to speak of and LAX is horribly placed to connect anyone. Ergo, neither of those cities work.

 

[nycbusdriver]

I think the point more or less is, you need a balanced mix of O&D *and* connecting traffic to sustain a hub.

Think of it this way: ICT is a great place for a hub geographically - so why not connect everyone through there?

Conversely, LAX has O&D out the wazoo, so why is it that nobody's made it a full-on connecting hub?

Of course, it's obvious... ICT has no O&D to speak of and LAX is horribly placed to connect anyone. Ergo, neither of those cities work.

Thank you! That was a great, succinct explanation by example.

Additionally, siphoning off SOME of the PHL connecting traffic just to send them through PIT would require a lot more airplanes and the matching support infrastructure. Dumping that many extra seats into the system would turn black ink red so fast it would make your head spin. Load factors would fall through the floor and, given that most of this connecting traffic is low yield, the losses would be staggering. (Didn't we just go through two bankruptcies to fix this problem? Why even consider bringing it back on ourselves?)

 

[diogenes]

I'll be convinced the moment I see revenues - minus ALL of the costs associated with PHL. Those costs include intangibles like goodwill (they show up on a balance sheet).

There is no way US does not know this info, and the fact they don't disclose it leads to speculation.

And with all due respect, given the track record with truth U management has, "I say so" don't feed the bulldog.

Assuming the mere fact of the PHL operations proves management has made a rational decision is assuming management is always rational. There are thousands of airline employees who know different.

 

[BoeingBoy]

I think the point more or less is, you need a balanced mix of O&D *and* connecting traffic to sustain a hub.

Thank you! That was a great, succinct explanation by example.

Ok - just what is this magic "balanced mix" - 50% O&D/50% connecting? 25/75? 10/90?

Once you've figured that out, explain how CLT and PHL both work as hubs despite wide differences in this so-called "balanced mix" of O&D/connecting traffic.

Jim

ps - I should probably note that I don't think there's anyone in management smart enough to pull off what I and other's have suggested, anyway. Heck, neither the last nor the present management can figure out how to effectively de-peak a hub - something far simplier than off-loading some of PHL's connecting traffic without upsetting the apple cart. Their "solution" would probably be to throw airplanes at it, as nycbusdriver said. So it's an intellectual exercise as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Jimmy Neutron]

Thank you! That was a great, succinct explanation by example.

Additionally, siphoning off SOME of the PHL connecting traffic just to send them through PIT would require a lot more airplanes and the matching support infrastructure. Dumping that many extra seats into the system would turn black ink red so fast it would make your head spin. Load factors would fall through the floor and, given that most of this connecting traffic is low yield, the losses would be staggering. (Didn't we just go through two bankruptcies to fix this problem? Why even consider bringing it back on ourselves?)

Not if you look at it realistically.....

PIT still has many of the smaller cities once served by mainline, yes many did go away, but still many remain....You have to ask yourself why that is......The real reason being is that there is still considerable local O&D traffic to support them.....

What US did was to take the mainline aircraft from these routes and replace them with 50 seat rj's which by the way go out at or near capacity on a regular basis, often turning away customers due to oversales.....The remaining customers must then choose PHL or CLT to connect to get to their destinations....

So the real question is this....

Do we need 6 or 7 flts a day from PHL to say JAX? Just how many of these people flying to JAX thru PHL are originating and how many are connecting?........There are many cities from PHL with just too many flts....Do we need 15/16 flts a day to BDL...come on....

So as you see, there is no need to add aircraft, or get rid of all the PHL connecting banks....Just find the right combination of the real need for the PHL operation while not subjecting our connecting customers to this nightmare....

We could easily move just 1 or 2 of these flts from PHL to another place like PIT or elsewhere, it's just that PIT already has considerable connections still left in place and it would only make sense to just take some of the load from the overcrowded PHL operation......

Come on folks, this is not brain surgery here.......

 

[FCYTravis]

Heck, neither the last nor the present management can figure out how to effectively de-peak a hub - something far simplier than off-loading some of PHL's connecting traffic without upsetting the apple cart.

Now that part, I really don't understand. Why HP management repeaked PHL is beyond me.

 

[LGA / 037]

With a 64% originating traffic percentage, this company will continue to its operation as is in PHL. Unlike the other hubs, the originating traffic is the meat & potatoes for PHL rather than the gravy. Originating traffic has to be a certain percentage for an airline to base its formula for a hub, but PHL is the highest in the country. Why else would WN even think about going in there ?

 

[supercruiser]

PIT was a successful and profitable hub for US Air for around 30 years or so, give or take a few years. In fact it was their only hub before the mergers of the 80's. Things coincidentally started to slowly go down hill at the old US Air around the same time PHL started to be built up and competed with PIT for connecting traffic, and management eventually decided to make PHL the big N. hub for the company, and PIT was downsized.

PHL cannot be fixed period. You cannot fix the runway layout, the taxi way layout or the ramp layout, or the gate layout (at least not in our lifetimes). You can't fix the ATC & weather delays caused by being sandwiched in-between NY and Washington. You can't fix the culture or the personnel problem, no matter how many people you add. Large amounts of revenue are lost as customers that live in cities W. of PHL do not travel on US to PHL, to then connect to points W. They're now on our competition. It's dysfunctional as a hub, as has been demonstrated for quite a few years now, with several different managements at the top and at the local level in PHL.

Evidently, some higher ups have tried to convince Doug Parker of this, but he doesn't want to listen, and admit failure of the hub operation in PHL. He seems to be blinded by the revenue base in PHL, and it must be very tantalizing, but maybe after another disastrous holiday season in PHL, he will see the light and do something else. If we're betting the future of the company on the PHL hub operation, this company is in serious trouble.

 

[Dog Wonder]

Hope the weather is good over the holidays in the Northeast.