As you all know, DL has their flagship hub at ATL with over 1,000 flights a day and has over 100,000,000 pax (total overall airport traffic). AA has their flagship hub at DFW, but only 800 or so flights and just over 67,000,000 pax (total overall airport traffic).

Though I am not a fan of DL's large ATL operation (as I have stated many times on various threads), those who have rebutted me have consistently stated that DL's 1,000+ flight ATL hub is very profitable and efficient for DL. If that is true, why hasn't AA built up DFW to be similar levels to ATL (i.e, 1,000+ flights and upgauging existing routes)? You'd think AA would want to follow in DL's footsteps and route as much traffic through DFW as possible, considering its central location in the country (under 4 hours from every major US city) and the booming North Texas economy, not to mention DFW has a lot more room to expand than ATL.

I am not arguing one way or another for this, I would just like to know people's thoughts on this and find out if anyone has any info on why AA hasn't done this. Is is a logistical, geographical, economical reason, or do they simply want to spread their traffic out more?

One of the biggest drivers besides their overall network strategy and historical pre-merger networks is geography.

DL-ATL is able to connect/flow a huge amount of capacity from Florida. AA-DFW is not positioned well to do so, except for flows going to western markets. DL is able to capture all that traffic going up and down the East Coast, to/from West Coast, and Midwest going to Florida and the Southeast.

AA-DFW and DL-DFW compete for similar flows from East Coast/Northeast markets to the western US.

Plus, DL-ATL is doing more or less the same job as AA-CLT + AA-MIA and some of AA-DFWs connecting flows, combined.

Delta is a well run airline generally and isn't much of a market follower on larger strategic initiatives. ATL is a huge hub and an economic engine for the city and frankly, the state of Georgia, but there are risks to having that much asset in one place, and the power outage few months back or a large storm cycling through can make for a very difficult few days. DL concentrates at ATL, DTW, and MSP. The rest of its hub operations are considerably smaller in terms of flight departures (SLC, JFK, LAX, SEA) or very much O&D focused (LGA) and there is also a focus on, well, focus cities (RDU, MCO for instance), even if they aren't really called that. DFW is a huge hub as it is but Parker has said CLT is actually one of its top performing hubs from a revenue standpoint. Different strategies are partially dictated by each of the big 3 airline's evolution post merger and the markets they are strongest in. UA has large hubs too, but does not dominate any of the markets where it has hubs, which some have said explains why they lag AA and DL in revenue. Yes, the practically own EWR, dominate DEN, and SFO and IAH, but they compete with at least 2 major carriers at each of their hubs or hub markets. DL dominates its markets. AA kind of does too, in CLT, DFW, and MIA though not so in ORD or LAX.

A general thought to throw out there:

Why does Delta not have a 1,200-flight operation at ATL when a 1,000-flight operation is so profitable? Because given all the factors and constraints, Delta believes 1,000 is right for ATL. American might believe 800 is about right for DFW.

A few other thoughts specific to ATL versus DFW.

--The population density of the eastern 1/3 of the country is quite a bit more dense than the midde 1/3 of the country
--American doesn't own the local O&D of metro D/FW like Delta owns Atlanta because of Southwest at DAL
--Both hubs are pretty-well situatied for significant connecting flows. But Atlanta is a perfect north-south connecting point between the densly-populated north and the tourist mecca Florida. Dallas doens't have anything near that magnitude to compare.

One thought I have is that on east west flows served out of DFW, it is redundant with ORD. If a New Yorker is flying to SJC for instance they really have two choices on AA. But if a New Yorker is flying to Florida they only have one choice to on Delta, for markets that aren’t served nonstop.

Delta has the advantage of location, location, location. There is one hub within 300 miles of Atlanta
with Southwest focus on originating paxs. Their Atlanta operation is growing but not near the size of the
Dallas operation at Love Field. At DFW they compete against Southwest in Dallas and Houston down the
road for a good portion of the same connecting traffic. United has the large hub in IAH that is close to a mirror
image of DFW. They also have a larger portion of discount airlines in DFW, then they do at Atlanta.
I would say Delta's best advantage they have is the facility in Atlanta. It was designed later and opened six years
after DFW, when connections became the airlines road to profit. DFW is poorly designed and have had
successful bandaids added to the facilities to make them functional yet not optimum. The comparison on the
multiple airsides at DFW is the reason for the gap in numbers with Atlanta. Atlanta is as close to the perfect
airport as you will ever find for that size. Designed for connections from the runways, the trams, the tunnels,
the ability to pass aircraft pushing back into the lanes. The ability to upgage aircraft types to small cities and
the volume grows with every year. It is easy to connect in Atlanta. It is more difficult and intentional to do the
same at DFW. When they built the International terminal in DFW, they should have built two linear buildings
with eighty gates, and the ability to knock down terminal B and add another fifty gates. They have enough land
that was the selling point when it opened. They missed the success of Atlanta connection patterns, they chose
to hold on to a poor design. They never corrected the largest problem with the design. The Air Train is nice,
but they could have changed along the way to make DFW a world class facility.

knope2001 wrote:

--The population density of the eastern 1/3 of the country is quite a bit more dense than the midde 1/3 of the country

1000x this. Atlanta is by far the largest metropolitan area centrally located to serve all connecting flows east of the Mississippi River. Charlotte, Nashville and Memphis (and to a lesser extent, Cincinnati and St. Louis) are the only other cities really capable of serving the omnidirectional traffic flows DL sends through ATL. All of those metropolitan areas are significantly smaller which is why only CLT has survived and ATL has remained the king of not only the Southeast but really the entire eastern third of the US.

wenders825 wrote:

AA prefers to not put all of its eggs in one basket - a much smarter move. CLT, for example, is an excellent connecting hub for the east coast

There are distinct advantages to balancing traffic across multiple hubs. As we've seen, when ATL has weather or a power outage, DL's entire global operation practically melts down. The huge percentage of flights and passengers they force to connect thru ATL leave passengers stranded sometimes for days. DL's "pride" in not using interline agreements doesn't help here, either. In AA's case, weather or a power outage at DFW will be bad -- but because they can re-route connecting passengers via ORD, PHX, or other hubs, it won't be the same global catastrophe like a shutdown at ATL.

Probably because the actual cost of each flight is much cheaper in ATL than any of the major hubs served by any carrier. So of course you would flow where its cheaper and you can dominate. Basic supply and demand.

There are probably several contributing factors, but I would guess that a big part of it is geography and population density. Atlanta is a large city itself, in the east, where the population density is significantly higher than in the central and western parts of the country. There’s more people, a lot of money and a lot of short stage lengths. This changes seasonally, but at one point last summer, DL was running a 321 between ATL and BOS every 90 minutes. Looking at the frequency and gauge that DL does from ATL to all the big east coast metropolis is probably part of the answer.

Nice that Delta is so large in ATL, but when weather goes down in ATL, the entire DL system shutters.

It is actually much harder to grow DFW beyond were it is due to "hub balance". Simply put, a hub needs to flow traffic directionally to be effective. AA has plenty of markets it can add to the east and north of DFW, but they've reached the upper bounds of quality markets to the west and south. All of the major markets IAH/AUS/SAT/ABQ/PHX/TUS/SAN/LAX etc... are pretty much covered on every bank. Beyond where they are today, the opportunities to fly additional frequencies west and south are very marginal.

Basically, all the good stuff is covered, so growth is focused at hubs where there are stronger opportunities.

wenders825 wrote:

AA prefers to not put all of its eggs in one basket - a much smarter move. CLT, for example, is an excellent connecting hub for the east coast

SO MUCH SMARTER....according to you. DL's profits say otherwise

twicearound wrote:

wenders825 wrote:

AA prefers to not put all of its eggs in one basket - a much smarter move. CLT, for example, is an excellent connecting hub for the east coast

SO MUCH SMARTER....according to you. DL's profits say otherwise

Take it easy. He was referring to it being a smarter move for AA. Just because a mega hub works for DL doesn't mean every major airline has to have one.

It has everything to do with geography and nothing to do with anything else.

Some other observations:

-The DL hub at ATL existed long before deregulation. DL used to brag that if you took the 6am departure out of Augusta for ATL, you could be anywhere in the Eastern or Central time zones for a late breakfast meeting and in the likes of Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle for lunch. So, the fact that a hub that existed in the 1970s is now over 1,000 flights should not be surprising.

-The AA hub at DFW really didn't get going until the 1980s. AA used to be in either Terminal A or Terminal C. When the original Braniff went bankrupt, AA took over BN's space in the other terminal. I think it wasn't until the late 90s that AA started to take gate space in Terminal B.

-Remember that AA used to have hubs at RDU, BNA, and SJC. AA's philosophy has always been to spread out the traffic, so that a disruption at one hub doesn't throw off the entire system. AA bought TWA, in part, because operations at ORD were so horrible during the summer of 2000, between far more severe thunderstorm activity than typical, as well as the United pilot sick-out. Having another Midwest hub at STL made so much sense.

-DFW was not built as a hub airport. The terminal configuration is somewhat like MCI. It's fine for handling a lot of O&D traffic, assuming that you had no carrier had operations in more than one terminal. But, the set-up is lousy for handling connections. There have been stories for decades about how AA's multi-terminal operation is frustrating for O&D traffic, because flights don't alway operate out of the same terminal.

AA allows for connections of 60 minutes. I once booked a trip with a 90-minute connection at DFW. The inbound flight was 45-minutes late, arriving at Terminal B. About 2/3rds of the connecting passengers needed to be rebooked, because they simply didn't have enough time to get to the gate for the connecting flight. I made my flight, but they started boarding the F passengers within a few minutes of my getting to the gate. That was in Terminal A. If I had been on a flight out of B, boarding would have started by the time I got there.

-The midfield terminal complex at ATL is the modern hub airport design. UA used a similar design for its terminal at ORD. DEN copied the ATL design.

JRL3289 wrote:

knope2001 wrote:

--The population density of the eastern 1/3 of the country is quite a bit more dense than the midde 1/3 of the country

1000x this. Atlanta is by far the largest metropolitan area centrally located to serve all connecting flows east of the Mississippi River. Charlotte, Nashville and Memphis (and to a lesser extent, Cincinnati and St. Louis) are the only other cities really capable of serving the omnidirectional traffic flows DL sends through ATL. All of those metropolitan areas are significantly smaller which is why only CLT has survived and ATL has remained the king of not only the Southeast but really the entire eastern third of the US.

There used to be some stat that 2/3 of the US population is less than 2 hours flying time from ATL.

What's with a.net now showing postings out of order? This one in particular...the original post is second in line.

Something else to consider is that DFW and CLT combined accomplish what ATL does plus more. AA doesn't route as much traffic through DFW as DL does through ATL because they don't need to. Yes one hub is more efficient than two, however two hubs give you more O&D opportunities which tend to be higher yielding. Also as previously mentioned, DL's network is more bottlenecked in fewer hubs whereas AA's and UA's is more evenly spread across all of their hubs. As long as everything in ATL is functioning properly it is a huge asset, however when there are hiccups it becomes a huge liability.

To respond to the question in the thread title: DFW is pretty built-up already... Over the past few years AA has vastly decreased the amount of 50-seater flying out of DFW in favor of moving in a ton of CR7/CR9/E75s. As the M80s have been getting retired, huge numbers of larger 738s and 321s have been coming in. So while departures may not be too much higher than at any point in recent memory, capacity is certainly up. Also, look at the long-haul additions AA has made in the last 10 years: GIG, MAD, AMS, FCO, ICN, PEK, PVG, HKG...

william wrote:

JRL3289 wrote:

knope2001 wrote:

--The population density of the eastern 1/3 of the country is quite a bit more dense than the midde 1/3 of the country

1000x this. Atlanta is by far the largest metropolitan area centrally located to serve all connecting flows east of the Mississippi River. Charlotte, Nashville and Memphis (and to a lesser extent, Cincinnati and St. Louis) are the only other cities really capable of serving the omnidirectional traffic flows DL sends through ATL. All of those metropolitan areas are significantly smaller which is why only CLT has survived and ATL has remained the king of not only the Southeast but really the entire eastern third of the US.

There used to be some stat that 2/3 of the US population is less than 2 hours flying time from ATL.

i would think it's even higher, look what the periphery is: IAH, DFW, STL, ORD, DTW, NYC, DC, PHL, MIA and everything in between

to the question in the OP, the answer is AA really can't (profitably anyways) since they're not positioned for much north south connecting traffic. no new terminal is going to fix that. my guess is AA prefers having DFW and CLT vs DL's ATL though

TWA85 wrote:

Something else to consider is that DFW and CLT combined accomplish what ATL does plus more. AA doesn't route as much traffic through DFW as DL does through ATL because they don't need to. Yes one hub is more efficient than two, however two hubs give you more O&D opportunities which tend to be higher yielding. Also as previously mentioned, DL's network is more bottlenecked in fewer hubs whereas AA's and UA's is more evenly spread across all of their hubs. As long as everything in ATL is functioning properly it is a huge asset, however when there are hiccups it becomes a huge liability.

Id agree with that. DFW has a very big Asia network, ATL less so. Its there, just not as big.

To echo the earlier points on geography, while DFW is well situated to capture a good deal of East-West traffic, so is ORD. DFW and ATL are essentially apples and oranges in terms of their network niches.

Also, one can't ignore the strength of post-Wright Amendment WN right down the street. Without the kind market power that DL exerts in ATL, AA would naturally face some commerical constraints in terms of further expanding DFW.

cschleic wrote:

What's with a.net now showing postings out of order? This one in particular...the original post is second in line.

I noticed the same thing, thank you.

Everyone has gotten this one pretty much. I would add that most of AA growth the next few years will likely be at DFW or PHL. AA;s biggest issue at DFW is terminal space and configuration.

Atlanta also has history. Don’t forget that it was THE hub for the South minus Florida for decades. My parents remember a time when Delta was then only real choice. (Hence the “no matter whether you go to heaven or to hell, you’ll end up going through Atlanta” thing)
Nowadays, there’s better competition, but Delta has a mega hub that’s been built up for years on a the bulk of commerce of a whole section of the country. Dallas has always had competition and American’s always looked at other hubs more.

AA doesn't have to route all their traffic through 1 hub because they have other ones in advantageous locations

Delta is spread a bit thin IMO

knope2001 wrote:

--American doesn't own the local O&D of metro D/FW like Delta owns Atlanta because of Southwest at DAL
.

I need you to explain that statement....isn't WN bigger in ATL than DAL????

If not, they're NOT significantly smaller

UpNAWAy wrote:

Everyone has gotten this one pretty much. I would add that most of AA growth the next few years will likely be at DFW or PHL. AA;s biggest issue at DFW is terminal space and configuration.

CLT will be growing too. AA is getting new gates as the terminal is expanded

727LOVER wrote:

knope2001 wrote:

--American doesn't own the local O&D of metro D/FW like Delta owns Atlanta because of Southwest at DAL
.

I need you to explain that statement....isn't WN bigger in ATL than DAL????

If not, they're NOT significantly smaller

It's pretty simple: WN is significantly bigger in DAL than they are in ATL. More specifically, they're bigger by 50% when looking strictly at departures.

https://www.swamedia.com/channels/Corpo ... heet#top10

Additionally, it's worth mentioning that WN has been in the Dallas area for its entire history. North Texas is where it first became a known quantity. It's one of the regions most prominent and successful corporate citizens and employs a lot of people ranging from hourly workers to high level execs. That brings with it a strong degree of intangible market power in spite if the historical restrictions at DAL. Contrast that to ATL, where tey were largely a minor player until buying FL a few years ago.

Delta enjoys certain advantages in Atlanta being on the east coast in the last 25 years they have expanded internationally to all corners of the Atlantic including nonstop to Mumbai, Dubai and Johannesburg( only J'burg is still flown). Europe and Latin America are well covered by Delta's ATL operation. AA's DFW operation have a more balanced two ocean route system, they fly to three cities in China from DFW nonstop: Peking, Shanghai and Hong Kong. AA also flies nonstop to Seoul & Tokyo from DFW. Delta has limited operations to Asia nonstop from ATL since Detroit and Seattle are its two primary Pacific Gateways. Whatever deficiency DFW has compared to ATL they are a better Asian gateway then Atlanta.

ShinyAndChrome wrote:

727LOVER wrote:

knope2001 wrote:

--American doesn't own the local O&D of metro D/FW like Delta owns Atlanta because of Southwest at DAL.

I need you to explain that statement....isn't WN bigger in ATL than DAL????

If not, they're NOT significantly smaller

It's pretty simple: WN is significantly bigger in DAL than they are in ATL. More specifically, they're bigger by 50% when looking strictly at departures.

https://www.swamedia.com/channels/Corpo ... heet#top10

Additionally, it's worth mentioning that WN has been in the Dallas area for its entire history. North Texas is where it first became a known quantity. It's one of the regions most prominent and successful corporate citizens and employs a lot of people ranging from hourly workers to high level execs. That brings with it a strong degree of intangible market power in spite if the historical restrictions at DAL. Contrast that to ATL, where tey were largely a minor player until buying FL a few years ago.

I agree that WN is significantly bigger at DAL than at ATL, even though WN does serve CLE, RSW, GSP, MSP, RIC, and PBI nonstop from ATL but not from DAL. There are also almost 14 million passengers who travel to, from, and through DAL on WN flights each year, whereas there are only 9.8 million passengers who travel to, from, and through ATL on WN flights each year.

ahj2000 wrote:

Atlanta also has history. Don’t forget that it was THE hub for the South minus Florida for decades. My parents remember a time when Delta was then only real choice. (Hence the “no matter whether you go to heaven or to hell, you’ll end up going through Atlanta” thing)
Nowadays, there’s better competition, but Delta has a mega hub that’s been built up for years on a the bulk of commerce of a whole section of the country. Dallas has always had competition and American’s always looked at other hubs more.

Actually, barring a brief period after EA went out of business, DL faced much more competition in the past than they do now. ATL was a very busy hub for EA going back to at least the 1950s and DL and EA always had close to the same number of flights from ATL. EA quit flying in 1991 and the very next year Valujet started which became FL which WN purchased. TW also opened a small hub in ATL in 1992 but it did not last long.

Also, CLT has been more of a domestic hub than anywhere in Florida and for decades too. EA's CLT hub dates back to at least the 1960s through 1986 and Piedmont started building up CLT as a hub around 1980.

Fact Check: DL does not really have over 1,000 flight at Atlanta on any regular basis. They had 1,000+ on 63 days last year, but the average was actually 926.

LAXdude1023 wrote:

It has everything to do with geography and nothing to do with anything else.

Sorry Detroit is better positioned for east west. Europe and Asia flow from most of the US. While it is true it is better situated for Central America, South America, The Caribbean, Mexico and Florida. It's not about location it's about beating it's chest that it operates out of the worlds busiest airport plain and simple Delta's management is fueled by ego.

Main reason is ATL is to DL what DFW+CLT+MIA are to AA. Having more than a single hub in the South/Southeast gives AA much more flexibility.

klm617 wrote:

LAXdude1023 wrote:

It has everything to do with geography and nothing to do with anything else.

Sorry Detroit is better positioned for east west. Europe and Asia flow from most of the US. While it is true it is better situated for Central America, South America, The Caribbean, Mexico and Florida. It's not about location it's about beating it's chest that it operates out of the worlds busiest airport plain and simple Delta's management is fueled by ego.

You do realize DL chose ATL, not the other way round, right?

ATL wouldn't be the world's busiest airport if it weren't for DL.

DELETE