Echoing what others have said.
1. CLT-BOS I could see, as DL matures their focus city in BOS.
2. Maybe DL adds a sky Club .... maybe.
3. LAX and SEA? DL doesn’t even fly ORD from LAX, and only just added ORD-SEA. If they won’t serve ORD from LAX, they are not going to serve CLT.

LovePrunesAnet wrote:

um why must DL have a "plan" for Charlotte?

Because that's what network planners do, hubs and spokes. At present, CLT is a spoke for DL. Even if it stays a spoke, which is will until it perhaps becomes a focus city, DL will have a CLT plan.

kavok wrote:

Echoing what others have said.
1. CLT-BOS I could see, as DL matures their focus city in BOS.
2. Maybe DL adds a sky Club .... maybe.
3. LAX and SEA? DL doesn’t even fly ORD from LAX, and only just added ORD-SEA. If they won’t serve ORD from LAX, they are not going to serve CLT.

If...then...
ORD...CLT...
I don't see the connection with that statement. There is no set picking order. Besides, DL has gate constraints at ORD.

There are several good posts on this thread WPvsMW especially. I think what some are missing is that this is not next years plan , but what may be something that will work in the future ( how far in the future is the key ).
Long range planning is what smart successful companies do. It may not ever come to pass, but if the opportunity is there and the numbers crunch, it may be something DL. does.
To all the DL. naysayers I would point out how LGA JFK LAX SEA were not supposed to work either...
To be clear, I don't think a hub is in the thinking, but I could see where a 70 to 80 flight operation would be feasible.
You know I worked as a Ramp Rat for 3 summers while I was in college. Sometimes we heard stuff.
Kinda what makes airlines fun to follow.

stlgph wrote:

tphuang wrote:

panamair wrote:

It does appear that DL has been going after the financial services crowd though with the increases they have put through in the NYC-CLT market. I didn’t realize that LGA-CLT is now up to 8x a day (on various 76 seaters) which puts it on par with LGA-RDU..while JFK-CLT is now at 4x a day with two of those being on mainline 717s compared to 5x daily on JFK-RDU (all on 76 seaters) -so JFK-CLT capacity is only 8 seats short of JFK-RDU on a daily basis...

It's pretty mind boggling how much money DL looses on those 2 routes.

Please enlighten us with an exact figure.

He/she can't. See tphuang is another poster who has fallen in love with what I assume is DB1B/T100 data that shows maybe 25% of the real P&Ls and takes that as fact.
For complex airlines like the US3 that spread domestic/international revenue all around, It is basically useless. (much less what does a route like JFK-CLT mean to say JFK-LHR as far as corporate contracts/marketshare etc. etc. etc.)


There isn't anyone on here who knows the valve of NYC-CLT to Delta that is stupid enough to post numbers for it.

Thanks, Capn.

MIflyer12 wrote:

afcjets wrote:

For over 10 years up until EA dehubbed CLT in 1986, DL was third behind EA and PI. EA was the biggest until soon after PI started building their CLT hub in 1980.

EDIT:
Even after EA dehubbed CLT in 1986, DL stayed in third place as EA still had a few more flights than DL, one more to ATL than DL, a MIA flight, and their moonlight flight to IAH. In the end though, DL and EA were tied with each having only six ATL flights.

Market share of 30 years ago is in no way relevant today. Hubs are a lot more concentrated than they used to be. A better question would be, 'How many seats did Delta+NW have on a daily basis 30 years ago, and has the count even grown as fast as the metro (MSA) population?' DFW didn't have 900 AA flights in 1986, nor CLT 700 AA flights.

I was responding to a post that claimed DL has always been in second place at CLT. NW did even not fly to CLT 30 years ago.

deltal1011man wrote:

stlgph wrote:

tphuang wrote:

It's pretty mind boggling how much money DL looses on those 2 routes.

Please enlighten us with an exact figure.

He/she can't. See tphuang is another poster who has fallen in love with what I assume is DB1B/T100 data that shows maybe 25% of the real P&Ls and takes that as fact.
For complex airlines like the US3 that spread domestic/international revenue all around, It is basically useless. (much less what does a route like JFK-CLT mean to say JFK-LHR as far as corporate contracts/marketshare etc. etc. etc.)


There isn't anyone on here who knows the valve of NYC-CLT to Delta that is stupid enough to post numbers for it.

Never said such routes don't contribute to overall network. Delta obviously feel that they are enough to justify running them. But that doesn't take away the fact that the average fares and load factor are way below what Delta would expect a route of such distance to normally generate. It's funny how I keep getting attacked and routes that get trimmed/cancelled always seem to be the ones where the data shows are doing poorly.

WPvsMW wrote:

LovePrunesAnet wrote:

um why must DL have a "plan" for Charlotte?

Because that's what network planners do, hubs and spokes. At present, CLT is a spoke for DL. Even if it stays a spoke, which is will until it perhaps becomes a focus city, DL will have a CLT plan.

Why in the world would DL make CLT a focus city when it already has one up the road at RDU and has a mega hub in ATL less than 300 miles away??

evank516 wrote:

WPvsMW wrote:

LovePrunesAnet wrote:

um why must DL have a "plan" for Charlotte?

Because that's what network planners do, hubs and spokes. At present, CLT is a spoke for DL. Even if it stays a spoke, which is will until it perhaps becomes a focus city, DL will have a CLT plan.

Why in the world would DL make CLT a focus city when it already has one up the road at RDU and has a mega hub in ATL less than 300 miles away??

Why does distance have anything to do with it?
If the CLT market is similar to the RDU market (which it is not), why not duplicate it?
Another function of a focus city could be to relieve the hub so the hub could grow in other ways. But the market has to be able to support it, obviously. Distance to a hub or other focus city would't have much to do with it.

evank516 wrote:

WPvsMW wrote:

LovePrunesAnet wrote:

um why must DL have a "plan" for Charlotte?

Because that's what network planners do, hubs and spokes. At present, CLT is a spoke for DL. Even if it stays a spoke, which is will until it perhaps becomes a focus city, DL will have a CLT plan.

Why in the world would DL make CLT a focus city when it already has one up the road at RDU and has a mega hub in ATL less than 300 miles away??

To be fair, LGA/JFK are less than 330 miles from Boston yet they have a lot of capital deployed to both. Yes bigger cities however the distance argument isn't always valid. If there was any significant growth here for DL it would be because DL has demand from CLT but because of the short stage length the revenue from those pax doesn't work well from a revenue management perspective and thus get insufficient allocation on connections. Add to that that while ATL is close, it is south of here. So, anything North of CLT and East of DTW isn't served. So, is there opportunity, maybe.

My main curiosity for all the new gates they plan to add on A concourse is who will fill them and to where? I could see DL & UA adding incremental adds. WN should in theory have some opportunity with LAS and maybe some Florida. Same with B6, some Florida opportunity, maybe Caribbean. Spirit could be an interesting add for the airport. Alaska maybe 1x a day to SEA.

TWFlyGuy wrote:

evank516 wrote:

WPvsMW wrote:

Because that's what network planners do, hubs and spokes. At present, CLT is a spoke for DL. Even if it stays a spoke, which is will until it perhaps becomes a focus city, DL will have a CLT plan.

Why in the world would DL make CLT a focus city when it already has one up the road at RDU and has a mega hub in ATL less than 300 miles away??

To be fair, LGA/JFK are less than 330 miles from Boston yet they have a lot of capital deployed to both. Yes bigger cities however the distance argument isn't always valid. If there was any significant growth here for DL it would be because DL has demand from CLT but because of the short stage length the revenue from those pax doesn't work well from a revenue management perspective and thus get insufficient allocation on connections. Add to that that while ATL is close, it is south of here. So, anything North of CLT and East of DTW isn't served. So, is there opportunity, maybe.

My main curiosity for all the new gates they plan to add on A concourse is who will fill them and to where? I could see DL & UA adding incremental adds. WN should in theory have some opportunity with LAS and maybe some Florida. Same with B6, some Florida opportunity, maybe Caribbean. Spirit could be an interesting add for the airport. Alaska maybe 1x a day to SEA.

Yes, LGA/JFK are actually less than 200 miles from BOS, however the big difference is the size of the cities. ATL/RDU/CLT probably can't even combine to make up the total population of NYC and BOS put together.

peanuts wrote:

evank516 wrote:

WPvsMW wrote:

Because that's what network planners do, hubs and spokes. At present, CLT is a spoke for DL. Even if it stays a spoke, which is will until it perhaps becomes a focus city, DL will have a CLT plan.

Why in the world would DL make CLT a focus city when it already has one up the road at RDU and has a mega hub in ATL less than 300 miles away??

Why does distance have anything to do with it?
If the CLT market is similar to the RDU market (which it is not), why not duplicate it?
Another function of a focus city could be to relieve the hub so the hub could grow in other ways. But the market has to be able to support it, obviously. Distance to a hub or other focus city would't have much to do with it.

DL picked RDU over the void left by LAA back in the 90s followed by Midway in the early 2000s. They had no one to go up against in RDU so they built it up. CLT is even closer to ATL and it is a very large AA hub (as you mentioned, the CLT market is not similar to the RDU market and this probably the number one reason why). I'm guessing you agree that a CLT focus city is not happening, but the argument is that CLT is sandwiched between a mega hub and a fast growing focus city already. CLT will stay a spoke.

evank516 wrote:

TWFlyGuy wrote:

evank516 wrote:

Why in the world would DL make CLT a focus city when it already has one up the road at RDU and has a mega hub in ATL less than 300 miles away??

To be fair, LGA/JFK are less than 330 miles from Boston yet they have a lot of capital deployed to both. Yes bigger cities however the distance argument isn't always valid. If there was any significant growth here for DL it would be because DL has demand from CLT but because of the short stage length the revenue from those pax doesn't work well from a revenue management perspective and thus get insufficient allocation on connections. Add to that that while ATL is close, it is south of here. So, anything North of CLT and East of DTW isn't served. So, is there opportunity, maybe.

My main curiosity for all the new gates they plan to add on A concourse is who will fill them and to where? I could see DL & UA adding incremental adds. WN should in theory have some opportunity with LAS and maybe some Florida. Same with B6, some Florida opportunity, maybe Caribbean. Spirit could be an interesting add for the airport. Alaska maybe 1x a day to SEA.

Yes, LGA/JFK are actually less than 200 miles from BOS, however the big difference is the size of the cities. ATL/RDU/CLT probably can't even combine to make up the total population of NYC and BOS put together.

peanuts wrote:

evank516 wrote:

Why in the world would DL make CLT a focus city when it already has one up the road at RDU and has a mega hub in ATL less than 300 miles away??

Why does distance have anything to do with it?
If the CLT market is similar to the RDU market (which it is not), why not duplicate it?
Another function of a focus city could be to relieve the hub so the hub could grow in other ways. But the market has to be able to support it, obviously. Distance to a hub or other focus city would't have much to do with it.

DL picked RDU over the void left by LAA back in the 90s followed by Midway in the early 2000s. They had no one to go up against in RDU so they built it up. CLT is even closer to ATL and it is a very large AA hub (as you mentioned, the CLT market is not similar to the RDU market and this probably the number one reason why). I'm guessing you agree that a CLT focus city is not happening, but the argument is that CLT is sandwiched between a mega hub and a fast growing focus city already. CLT will stay a spoke.

You're making way too much of a distance argument. The analysis on items like this is fairly simple. If DL saw enough demand/opportunity to add service between CLT & XXX such that the service could be profitable, they would add it. The other part of the analysis involves looking at service between ATL & XXX. If the CLT demand removed from the ATL service could be backfilled with comparable or better revenue, then it's absolutely worthwhile. That could even mean that the revenue attributed to the ATL-XXX flight is not as much as what that CLT-ATL-XXX pax is providing but that the contribution to the new origination city flight YYY-ATL is more beneficial than the loss on the CLT-ATL flight. I'm not as familiar with DL's flight profitability model as I used to be but a good example was TATL flights to ATL. DL would generally attribute a disproportionate amount of the ticket revenue to the TATL-ATL flight to make those better performing, especially in the off-season before carriers learned how to efficiently pull down off season service. As a result, a pax from most European destinations might displace demand from CLT-ATL for a trip to MCO because it was more beneficial to the system to have that seat on the TATL flight occupied.

evank516 wrote:

TWFlyGuy wrote:

evank516 wrote:

Why in the world would DL make CLT a focus city when it already has one up the road at RDU and has a mega hub in ATL less than 300 miles away??

To be fair, LGA/JFK are less than 330 miles from Boston yet they have a lot of capital deployed to both. Yes bigger cities however the distance argument isn't always valid. If there was any significant growth here for DL it would be because DL has demand from CLT but because of the short stage length the revenue from those pax doesn't work well from a revenue management perspective and thus get insufficient allocation on connections. Add to that that while ATL is close, it is south of here. So, anything North of CLT and East of DTW isn't served. So, is there opportunity, maybe.

My main curiosity for all the new gates they plan to add on A concourse is who will fill them and to where? I could see DL & UA adding incremental adds. WN should in theory have some opportunity with LAS and maybe some Florida. Same with B6, some Florida opportunity, maybe Caribbean. Spirit could be an interesting add for the airport. Alaska maybe 1x a day to SEA.

Yes, LGA/JFK are actually less than 200 miles from BOS, however the big difference is the size of the cities. ATL/RDU/CLT probably can't even combine to make up the total population of NYC and BOS put together.

peanuts wrote:

evank516 wrote:

Why in the world would DL make CLT a focus city when it already has one up the road at RDU and has a mega hub in ATL less than 300 miles away??

Why does distance have anything to do with it?
If the CLT market is similar to the RDU market (which it is not), why not duplicate it?
Another function of a focus city could be to relieve the hub so the hub could grow in other ways. But the market has to be able to support it, obviously. Distance to a hub or other focus city would't have much to do with it.

DL picked RDU over the void left by LAA back in the 90s followed by Midway in the early 2000s. They had no one to go up against in RDU so they built it up. CLT is even closer to ATL and it is a very large AA hub (as you mentioned, the CLT market is not similar to the RDU market and this probably the number one reason why). I'm guessing you agree that a CLT focus city is not happening, but the argument is that CLT is sandwiched between a mega hub and a fast growing focus city already. CLT will stay a spoke.

It all depends on the market. Again, distance plays a very little part to it in my opinion. If CLT is yielding as much as RDU, what is to stop DL from making it a focus city? ATL? Doubtful. (If the CLT O/D and yield numbers support it why not, it would only help ATL and bolster the relieved seats to other/new markets).

Take MEM for example. DL's market couldn't support it. Not even as a reliever hub for ATL.
A different (non-hub-distance related) example: TPA and MCO are 90 (dreadful) minutes apart yet DL sees opportunities to make these more than just spoke (but less than focus) cities.

One of the biggest challenges in current network planning is the planners telling the software designers how the yield management engine (aka revenue management engine) should segment costs (and therefore yield) on multisegment itineraries. I smile when I book roundtrip HNL/SIN in J, with a connection in NRT, for less than roundtrip HNL/NRT in J, knowing that that pencils out OK for DL.

And sometimes, the planners really roll the dice, like HA's new HNL/BOS nonstop. The quants and marketing dept. say it should work... and it probably will. The world awaits HA's starting HNL/LON... no one else will. HA planners already know the load factors required to start HNL/LON rather than HNL/SCL or HNL/GRU, for example.

Turning back to DL and CLT, AA's growth at CLT means DL must develop a competitive response. I think DL has plans for leasing more gates at CLT than it can immediately use, and subleasing the extra gates, but that's just my opinion, and having plans doesn't mean DL will execute those plans. I don't know anyone who drives from RTP or the Triad to CLT to fly... there probably are some folks who do that, but I suspect there are added factors, like VFR in the Charlotte area and also using CLT. Why deal with I-85 any more than absolutely necessary?

TWFlyGuy wrote:

To be fair, LGA/JFK are less than 330 miles from Boston yet they have a lot of capital deployed to both. Yes bigger cities however the distance argument isn't always valid. If there was any significant growth here for DL it would be because DL has demand from CLT but because of the short stage length the revenue from those pax doesn't work well from a revenue management perspective and thus get insufficient allocation on connections. Add to that that while ATL is close, it is south of here. So, anything North of CLT and East of DTW isn't served. So, is there opportunity, maybe.

DL still does serve CVG nonstop from CLT, and CVG is one of the few places outside of the East Coast that has plenty of nonstop competition out of CLT.

I could see DL launching LAX-CLT any day now. Beyond that, I'm not sure how they would make a focus city out of CLT when RDU is right now the road. Perhaps maybe some point to point new routes like CLT-RDU/BOS/CLE/BDL/MCO/MSY depending on what corporate contracts they can pick up on.

Recall there is a sheer lack of competition at CLT and DL is really the only other major carrier that would ever try to compete with AA. DL even flies CLT-SLC with mainline on a 738 for a while which UA only added CLT-DEN to it's mid-continent hub on Skywest only last year.

Adding a SkyClub is a no brainer. I'm surprised there isn't one there already. Did they ever have a Crown Room Club there? I know in DEN they used to and shut it down and re-opened as a SkyClub about 2 years ago. That would be a similarly sized station.

N649DL wrote:

I could see DL launching LAX-CLT any day now. Beyond that, I'm not sure how they would make a focus city out of CLT when RDU is right now the road. Perhaps maybe some point to point new routes like CLT-RDU/BOS/CLE/BDL/MCO/MSY depending on what corporate contracts they can pick up on.

Recall there is a sheer lack of competition at CLT and DL is really the only other major carrier that would ever try to compete with AA. DL even flies CLT-SLC with mainline on a 738 for a while which UA only added CLT-DEN to it's mid-continent hub on Skywest only last year.

Adding a SkyClub is a no brainer. I'm surprised there isn't one there already. Did they ever have a Crown Room Club there? I know in DEN they used to and shut it down and re-opened as a SkyClub about 2 years ago. That would be a similarly sized station.

I think all the past lounges are currently accounted. IIRC, the current USO lounge is an old BA lounge from the times of the BA/US agreement

DL never had a Skyclub at CLT. EA had an Ionosphere Lounge but I think that was before the current terminal was built.

BA had a Terraces Lounge that closed in 2002 when they left CLT. As ahj2000 pointed out that lounge is now the USO lounge...which as a result is reportedly one of the nicest USO lounges in the country.

US also had a third Club location in Concourse D where the current Pinkberry is located.