Jester said:
My belief and I have said before is that PHX will become primarily an RJ hub to relieve those flight out of LAX with mainline flying to all the hubs and maybe some select cities (BOS? SEA? ATL?) along with RJs and E175s taking over more of the mainline flying into DSM, MCI, and STL in the short term. Good hubs have good O&Ds and decent yields and compared to LAX, DFW and ORD, PHX would be a poor choice to keep as a hub.
In 2015, PHX had the 11th highest domestic O&D, just ahead of DFW. My prediction is that AA continues to fly from PHX to/from the various big cities that generate the Phoenix O&D. I don't see a future emphasis on connecting traffic, but with a healthy schedule of mainline planes to/from the biggest markets, connecting opportunities will be there to fill the planes. Some connections no longer make as much sense, like the shuttle-like service on TUS-PHX. That route has literally zero O&D and existed solely because LUS had no other close-by hubs from which to serve TUS.
I think that PHX will continue to see plenty of 2-class CRJs and E175s, but I don't see it being an RJ hub.
Sure, Southwest ran up to 179 daily departures at PHX this summer (by definition, all mainline), but IMO, business traveler suits aren't going to fly Southwest to PHX on 3-4 hour routes as often as they will on one or two hour flights. That will limit the ability of WN to "own" PHX the way WN owns the intra-CA and intra-TX short-haul markets. On short hops, there are lots of suits flying WN. On cross-country flights, not so much.
jimntx said:
Though I can't imagine why we would want to fly out of there. I think the money we lost on the move to compete with WN on DAL-STL would have taught us some kind of lesson.
Flights with less than 30 passengers (which was common for the S80's we had on that route) rarely make money. On DAL-STL I saw a full airplane exactly once. The Cardinals and the Rangers were playing an interleague game in St. Louis. A whole bunch of fans went up for the game because there were flights late enough back to DAL and DFW that they didn't have to stay overnight and pay for a hotel room.
I don't think that AA's previous DAL experience in competing with WN to the Wright Amendment/Shelby Amendment states is an effective predictor of what would happen if AA was able to compete today to LGA, LAX, ORD, DCA and MIA. When AA was flying those empty MD-80s to its dying hub at STL, it was prohibited from flying mainline planes (with more than 56 seats) to the big business hubs. Since October, 2014, Southwest has been allowed to fly DAL-Anywhere Domestic, and WN has grown dramatically at DAL. I don't pretend to know whether AA would want to fly 20 daily mainline flights from DAL if it had not been compelled to lease those two gates to VX, but I don't think AA would automatically bleed money on routes like LGA, LAX, ORD, DCA and MIA.
Although I don't think that WN is attracting all the suits in the metroplex to its DAL flights, there may be some suits who are willing to trade assigned seats, first class and MCE and meals for the convenience of close-in Love Field. Those are the passengers AA would presumably keep in the AA fold if it were flying from DAL to its key business hubs.
