re: Atlanta Airport: Why are flights so concentrated there?

I was lucky to avoid a head ache today, but I am thinking about switching from Delta because of the problems this event exposed.

Other airlines are less dependent on a single hub in my region. An event like this would be less likely to leave me completely stranded on some other airlines.

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I understand the functionality of hubs

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Yet, the rest of your post suggests otherwise.

There is an economy of scale - actually there are two schools of thought - the "point-to-point" folks want to go with more planes, more routes, more direct flights with smaller aircraft, but no major carrier has ever gone "all in" on that - they retain the hub concept, even if they go with a more diffuse web.

Back to your original point - Atlanta is - by far - the largest city of the "Old South" - the fact it was picked and operating as a hub before Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and western areas eclipsed it in metro area population also makes a difference. And, really, other than, maybe Charlotte - no other city in the SE part of the country makes sense to host a huge regional hub. Geographically, maybe Birmingham, but that's about it.

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It’s the 2nd largest metro area in the US without two or more airports serving it. And the one ahead of it if PHL with substantial rail service. And every one of the 8 metros larger than ATL are hub airports as well

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Yeah technically they are hubs but nothing remotely close to what Delta has going on in ATL. For example take Virgin out of SFO and Delta out of ATL. SFO would be a far busier airport

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And, really, other than, maybe Charlotte - no other city in the SE part of the country makes sense to host a huge regional hub. Geographically, maybe Birmingham, but that's about

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Dallas used to be a Delta hub. Memphis was a Northwest hub for years. I don't know of any hub ever being in Birmingham.

Maintaining a hub in either of those (MEM or DFW) would have probably help their competitiveness in Texas, which has been a growing market for decades.

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No one is going to look up your airport codes !
WHY don't you TELL us, which airports, you feel are the best ?

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If you have to look them up you don’t fly often enough.

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A simple solution would be to take 1 flight a day from atlanta to your major markets (think msy) and move it to cincy, raleigh or another less utilized hub. Then you still have 11 flights a day to atlanta (instead of 12), you give your network some extra flexibility during events like this, and passengers see it as a new city or extra frequency being added.

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All about the $$$ and O/D traffic.

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If nola to salt lake or minneapolis had a morning flight that would be great

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Depends on the time of year. DL moves around that MSY-SLC flight and it’s frequency a good bit depending on the season.

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You all know why Delta is named Delta? For the city where it started and that could have been THE hub of the south.

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Delta Air Lines was actually named after the MS delta in Monroe, Louisiana. Before, it was a cropdusting service called Huff Daland Dusters, out of Macon Georgia. The company moved to Monroe to cropdust the Mississippi delta after the outbreak of boll weevils on cotton crops. From that point they started flying airmail and eventually passengers.

In 1929 the first passenger route was Dallas to Jackson, with stops in Shreveport and Monroe. A year later operations began in Atlanta.

I was in LHR Sunday/Monday for the blizzard and it crippled BA. It was a madhouse.

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You don't see the value of routing passengers through an operating hub when another hub is down?

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Exactly.

Or rather, not in the manner you are talking about to justify Memphis being a hub again.

I’ll ask you again: from where is all of this unused capacity that you are hoping to use? Every rerouted passenger is from an unused seat on any given day. You won’t find space for more than 5-10% or so of rerouted passengers on a solvent airline, because sustained losses of that magnitude will probably lead to bankruptcy.

Or do you just expect there to be full out terminals sitting unused except for when they are called into service with no notice.

So let’s recap.

You want to increase annual expenditures by tens of millions of dollars running an extra hub for essentially the same revenue, in order to give yourself the ability to service one out of ten affected passengers for an occurance that MAY happen once every 5-10 years.

Yeah, that’s solid financial planning.

Especially when you consider the airlines have back channel agreements for on the random days stuff like this happens. So literally all hubs are there for the taking, and Delta has access to Charlotte NC just the same as them having a hub there.


Starting to see the problem?

And this doesn’t even touch the logistical issue of how many people are merely there for a connecting flight, which can’t be duplicated at the drop of a hat elsewhere, and all of the missed flights at all airports because of the planes themselves that are tied up with the downed hub.

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It hasn't been one. Southwest has a large presence there, but no where near hub level.

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Southwest has a good setup. It would be much more difficult to completely cripple them the way Delta was crippled yesterday.