topDawg said:
and JFK has been a hub for Delta post PA. May not have been as large as it is today but it was a hub. LGA was over 100 flights before the slot swap.
All I am saying is acting like Delta was some back woods regional airline is a joke. In the 1990s Delta was larger to Europe than America but yet to LDV Delta is the regional airline.I call horse crap.
In the early 90's, American and United were the primary non-stop options between LA and NYC/DC nonstop. Delta wasn't even in the conversation. I know because that is when I started flying back and forth from college and an internship in DC. Delta could only get you to both places via Atlanta. In part, that's how in LA (and even NYC) Delta got the perception of being a regional airline.
Back then, I also came to this conclusion from talking to many college friends and associates. I went to a college in CT which attracted students from all over the country. For those from the west coast, United and American were the favored airlines. For those from the midwest, American and United again were the favored airlines. For those from Texas, American and Continental (through EWR) were the favored airlines. For whatever reason, in proportion to those groups, there weren't many students from the southeast at my college. (Those students might have favored Delta.)
That was in the early 90's. But, even up to the late 90's, one could walk through the ticketing area of LAX T5 and get a sense that most of the Delta passengers had originated in the Southeast. Back then when I had the chance to take my partner to the airport (AA T4), I would walk through the ticketing lobbies on the south side. From that, I concluded that there were differences between the various customer groups that were consistent with the observations I had made earlier. While those differences had diluted over time, vestiges of them persisted in nuanced ways. (You still cannot fly nonstop LA/DC or LA/Chicago on Delta.)
On the subject of LA/DC, there's perhaps a stronger argument to be made for this perception. That is, there's the possibility that the lack of this route has in effect "regionalized" Delta in the mind of one LA's significant industries, aerospace. Indeed, it was originally my partner's perception that Delta was a regional airline. That is based on his experiences working within the So Cal Defense Industry and conversations he's had with his own associates. For the record, his company has dropped Delta as one of their preferred airlines because American more or less serves the national scope of their operations. His company, however, does not force travel on American. Those who opt out, however, often choose United, not Delta.
Thus, in addition to what commavia asserted above, there is the perception based on a range of experiences that Delta was and may still be (for certain industries from LA) a regional airline.