Considering all of the expansion in CLT with the addition of new gates for AA in Concourse B, C.....that leaves Phase 2 of Terminal A with 18 new gates.....Who thinks Delta might acquire those to alleviate ATL???

CLTDAL wrote:

Considering all of the expansion in CLT with the addition of new gates for AA in Concourse B, C.....that leaves Phase 2 of Terminal A with 18 new gates.....Who thinks Delta might acquire those to alleviate ATL???

Nobody that even remotely follows current airline market trends would even consider such a thought.

Apparently when Phase 1 of Terminal A opened, Delta wanted ALL of it. AA said NO. But...Delta had a good 6-7 gates on A. I think something might be in the works. They have a lot of flying out of RDU as well....mostly RJ, but its sizeable.

Why would they open a crew base when the only flights they have from CLT are to their hubs?

I don't think DL wants to do anything to "alleviate" ATL. If anything, they want to put as many flights into it as possible.

Clearly, DL wants all the new gates, not for their own use, but to slow the growth of a competitor who has a megahub in the back yard of ATL.

CLTDAL wrote:

Apparently when Phase 1 of Terminal A opened, Delta wanted ALL of it. AA said NO. But...Delta had a good 6-7 gates on A. I think something might be in the works. They have a lot of flying out of RDU as well....mostly RJ, but its sizeable.

Problem for Delta is that the local CLT market is quite small and depends on connect traffic. The local market that does exist is all AA so Delta would be left with connecting traffic only, adding nothing they cant do over ATL and without local traffic highly unprofitable. Most likely Delta just wants to tie up the airport and prevent AA from growing in CLT.

Those gates are already assigned.

Why would they? It would make little to no sense.

CLTDAL wrote:

Apparently when Phase 1 of Terminal A opened, Delta wanted ALL of it. AA said NO. But...Delta had a good 6-7 gates on A. I think something might be in the works. They have a lot of flying out of RDU as well....mostly RJ, but its sizeable.

Delta has quite a few hubs. Any reasonable amount of frequency to a majority of them creates a decent outstation operation. DL has 7 gates at PHL and RON's aircraft all over the airport.

CLTDAL wrote:

Apparently when Phase 1 of Terminal A opened, Delta wanted ALL of it. AA said NO. But...Delta had a good 6-7 gates on A. I think something might be in the works. They have a lot of flying out of RDU as well....mostly RJ, but its sizeable.

DL is getting 6 total gates on A con, AA the other 7.

There’s no way AA will allow them to acquire enough gates to make a huge expansion. As you should expect DL if AA was trying to acquire a lot more gates in ATL.

CLT is AA turf and Charlotte airport needs to keep American as happy as possible.

DL can play around in RDU, not CLT.

RDU is a more viable option being a focus city with significant growth planned there.

I’m not sure what’s worse. The question or those taking the question/suggestion seriously.

compensateme wrote:

AA is nearly 90% connecting traffic traffic. It’d be ridiculous to believe DL is interested in CLT.

I read an article recently saying CLT was 75% connecting traffic. I'm not sure if that was 75% just on AA or on all carriers; if that number was for all CLT airlines, AA has about 80% connecting traffic. Not that different from 90% anyway, but still a huge amount of connections.

Delta doesn't even fly to LAX or SEA from Charlotte. Until they're willing to compete with AA on a hub-to-hub route, they're not going to do anything at CLT.

Reliever hubs (mythical hubs that would only exist to relieve "pressure" from the main hub) only exist in a.net land. In 2001, when AA purchased TW, they did so with the premise that STL would make a great reliever hub to their operation in ORD. But in the end, they ended up ditching STL. Other mergers where a smaller hub could have been used as a "reliever" to its relatively close-by mega hub that ended up being axed include [email protected](for ORD) [email protected](for ATL) [email protected](for DTW). Besides with the approx. 1 hour flight between ATL and CLT means DL can easily deadhead in any crews to work x-CLT flights.

Janj wrote:

compensateme wrote:

AA is nearly 90% connecting traffic traffic. It’d be ridiculous to believe DL is interested in CLT.

I read an article recently saying CLT was 75% connecting traffic. I'm not sure if that was 75% just on AA or on all carriers; if that number was for all CLT airlines, AA has about 80% connecting traffic. Not that different from 90% anyway, but still a huge amount of connections.

Delta doesn't even fly to LAX or SEA from Charlotte. Until they're willing to compete with AA on a hub-to-hub route, they're not going to do anything at CLT.

I wrote that off the top of my head; my numbers are a few years old. You’re correct, per CLT’s latest annual report, the percentage of connecting traffic on AA has fallen to 80%.

CLT has not seen a change in the number of connecting passengers since 2014 (!), and SLC has nearly caught up to it in local traffic, making CLT and SLC compete for title of the smallest hub.

http://www.cltairport.com/News/Document ... FY2017.pdf

Man, be a helluva lot of fun to bid on those trips.

No Delta would have kept Memphis open if that was the case. ATL still has plenty of flight capacity, but does need to expand to handle more people.

To the OP, there’s a lot more to opening a crew base than assigning crews there, which why the US carriers have brought down many crews to just the hubs. The base has to have a Chief Pilot, an office support staff, local LCA in base. Sufficient trips have to originate there to justify the crews of the types flown out of there.

GF

What does a crew base consist of? I am truly wanting to know? Around how many flights justify a crew base?

For example, DL had B777 flights to SYD, ex-LAX but didn’t have a LAX B777 crew base. ATL crews deadheaded to LAX, had a crew rest in LA, then SYD, return, RON, deadhead to ATL. The deadheads are paid the same as flying, expensive but initially worth it as cheaper than a crew base. Now, they opened a B777 crew base in LAX, they already had one for other types. As I said, assigned Line Check Airmen, Chief Pilot, an office and enough scheduled flights out of the base. The Chief probably gets paid an override on top of the largest base equipment, plus the LCAs get 15% override and are staffed in relation to the assigned crews.

GF

Ok, so the chief doesn’t fly, he just over sees the entire crew base operation at a assigned airport? Does that mean those people have to live in or around the Los Angeles area?

Yes, he does fly, must be on the seniority list. Pilots may or may not live in or around LAX. A friend lives in Colorado, used to commute to the DL ATL crew base. When DL started B777 service to SYD, by the schedule he’d have to commute to ATL, deadhead to LAX, overnight and start the trip. All paid. He just took the pay and flew UA, DEN-LAX. Crew base ended that, now he commutes DEN-LAX at his own time and expense.

The Base CP usually is in the office and lives locally, though he could commute in for the week. The override was 20% at EAL.


Gf

Gotcha! So I could live in Seattle and my crew base I’m assigned is ATL, it’s just on my time and dime to get to ATL when I’m scheduled!?

Is Delta getting a Sky Club at CLT?

fedex1 wrote:

Gotcha! So I could live in Seattle and my crew base I’m assigned is ATL, it’s just on my time and dime to get to ATL when I’m scheduled!?

I take it you’re not the REAL FEDEX 1?

GF

CLTDAL wrote:

Considering all of the expansion in CLT with the addition of new gates for AA in Concourse B, C.....that leaves Phase 2 of Terminal A with 18 new gates.....Who thinks Delta might acquire those to alleviate ATL???

Hmmm, this is a good of idea as a AA hub @ATL...next question

I love aviation, never said I was in the know, or even close to it. I ask questions, to get educated. I read a lot. Sorry for asking uneducated questions. Thank you for the folks that answer my questions.

MEM is not CLT. Charlotte is a beautiful City with so much growth going on....they predict the City to be considered a "Major US City" within the next 3-5 years according to the local news here. Everywhere you look- building!!! Infrastructure is being developed to better serve the city and its residents: Widening of all the freeways, the light rail expansion and even toll roads. Apartments are going up in a day and homes are being built everywhere. Not to mention that the skyline is rapidly expanding!!! Charlotte has it going on. WHY would Delta not want a piece of that??? Remember, they co-existed in ATL with AirTran for years....Considering CLT has a HUB carrier, AA....who is to say that Delta could not survive as a quality "alternative " carrier to AA??? Customers want a choice....and the low cost carriers in CLT only fly to a handful of places.....and yes, Delta IS opening a SkyClub in CLT soon.

I don’t think so. Because AA has lots of flights here so I don’t think DL nor even United or Southwest will established a based here.

CLTDAL wrote:

MEM is not CLT. Charlotte is a beautiful City with so much growth going on....they predict the City to be considered a "Major US City" within the next 3-5 years according to the local news here. Everywhere you look- building!!! Infrastructure is being developed to better serve the city and its residents: Widening of all the freeways, the light rail expansion and even toll roads. Apartments are going up in a day and homes are being built everywhere. Not to mention that the skyline is rapidly expanding!!! Charlotte has it going on. WHY would Delta not want a piece of that??? Remember, they co-existed in ATL with AirTran for years....Considering CLT has a HUB carrier, AA....who is to say that Delta could not survive as a quality "alternative " carrier to AA??? Customers want a choice....and the low cost carriers in CLT only fly to a handful of places.....and yes, Delta IS opening a SkyClub in CLT soon.

So many who work in the industry have explained how opening a crew base is expensive and isn't something that is always directly correlated to the level of service. Delta can increase service to CLT, and they might, but they don't have to open a crew base in CLT to increase service.

The other side of your argument is that CLT could use more service. If it warrants more airline service, it most likely will get it: From AA.

Why will this service come from AA? Lets jump outside of airlines for a moment and talk about internet connected computers. If before the internet was in existence, you took a computer that was worth $2,000 and you made it able to connect to the internet, but it was the only computer that could connect to the internet, what is the value of this computer now? The answer is $2,000. Having a computer that can connect to the internet isn't any more valuable than one that can't because there isn't another computer to connect to, since its the first one. That is the crux of the network effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

So how does this work in the airline business with hubs? Lets say I have four airports, AAA, BBB, CCC, and DDD, and I have airplanes that can fly exactly 100 passengers. Lets look at the demand for flights at each airport.

From AAA:

• 70 people want to fly to BBB
• 10 people want to fly to CCC
• 10 people want to fly to DDD

From BBB:

• 40 people want to fly to AAA
• 50 people want to fly to CCC
• 20 people want to fly to DDD

From CCC:

• 10 people want to fly to AAA
• 60 people want to fly to BBB
• 30 people want to fly to DDD

From DDD:

• 20 people want to fly to AAA
• 40 people want to fly to BBB
• 20 people want to fly to CCC

If the airline decides its only profitable to serve routes where there are 60 or more people to fly. Also, they're not going to let anyone connect to another flight. So given these constraints this leaves the airline only flying these two routes:

• AAA to BBB - They fly 70 people on this route.
• CCC to BBB - They fly 60 people on this route.

If you want to fly from DDD, you're out of luck, your city doesn't generate enough demand.

But, you say, this isn't how airlines work! They allow people to connect to other flights at hubs, in fact they encourage it! So lets keep the 60 or more people rule, but allow connections at one location, BBB. That leaves us with the following routes:

• AAA to BBB - They fly 90 people on this route. 70 of them want to go to BBB, and the other 20 want to go to CCC or DDD.
• CCC to BBB - They fly 100 people on this route. 60 of them want to go to BBB, and the other 40 want to go to AAA or DDD.
• DDD to BBB - They fly 80 people on this route. 40 of them want to go to BBB, and the other 40 want to go to AAA or CCC.

Low and behold now a flight to DDD makes sense, because they've jumped over that threshold of 60 passengers on a flight by combining the passengers who want to to to BBB, AAA, and CCC on one flight.

So how does this play into DL's decision to add service to CLT? They have a limited number of airplanes, and they're going to deploy them where it makes the most sense. )Ignoring for a moment, that a plane that is full of passengers, may not be a profitable flight.) Airlines have the goal of running their flights as full as possible. Lets say Delta has one additional plane to add. They can fly it from CLT to DEN or from ATL to DEN, but not both. Delta doesn't have a hub in CLT or in DEN, so every passenger on that flight is only going from DEN to CLT, they can't go anywhere else, as a result, DL only gets 60 passengers on this flight. However if DL runs the flight from DEN to ATL, they can connect passengers. Lets say they get 40 passengers from DEN who want to go to ATL. They then pick up another:

• 5 passengers who are going to Gulfport, MS
• 10 passengers who are going to Orlando, FL
• 1 passenger who is going to Lagos in Nigera
• 3 passengers who are going to Johannesburg, South Africa
• 6 passengers who are going to London, England
• 5 passengers who are going to Mobile, AL
• 1 passenger who is going to Elmira, NY
• 19 people who are going to San Juan, PR

Even though only 40 people really want to go from DEN to ATL, Delta manages to put 90 people on that flight, because 50 of those passengers are connecting on. So DL adds the flight to ATL instead of CLT, since they'll move more passengers that way. Oh, and if DL wants to add a flight to Sydney, Australia at some point they'll get another 2 people from Denver who will get on that flight, making both the Sydney, Australia flight work better as well as the DEN to ATL flight work better. Its a virtuous cycle.

This works the same for AA at CLT, but they also a tool to inflict pain on DL if they decide to start a DEN to CLT flight. AA like DL at ATL gets 50 extra passengers because they run a hub at CLT and get people to other airports. If DL decides to move in on their DEN to CLT flight, AA has got 10 seats that they can discount deeply, and make sure that DL doesn't make money on that flight and goes back to their own turf. Oh and the fun thing about DEN to CLT? If DL starts it they'll also have competition from United and Frontier airlines who both have a hub in DEN, and UA and F9 will sell their 10 seats at a deep discount.

So DL might want to give a choice to CLT, but they'll happily provide that choice via ATL, MSP, DTW, SLC, and NYC, since they already have hubs there and they'll get the added benefit of the consolidated passengers that a hub provides.

This of course is all simplified, but it shows the basic dynamics that are at play with hub airports, and why DL just isn't going to add many flights from CLT that don't touch their hubs.

CLTDAL wrote:

MEM is not CLT. Charlotte is a beautiful City with so much growth going on....they predict the City to be considered a "Major US City" within the next 3-5 years according to the local news here. Everywhere you look- building!!! Infrastructure is being developed to better serve the city and its residents: Widening of all the freeways, the light rail expansion and even toll roads. Apartments are going up in a day and homes are being built everywhere. Not to mention that the skyline is rapidly expanding!!! Charlotte has it going on. WHY would Delta not want a piece of that??? Remember, they co-existed in ATL with AirTran for years....Considering CLT has a HUB carrier, AA....who is to say that Delta could not survive as a quality "alternative " carrier to AA??? Customers want a choice....and the low cost carriers in CLT only fly to a handful of places.....and yes, Delta IS opening a SkyClub in CLT soon.

There are insanely beautiful parts of Memphis along with it's warts. Charlotte has warts too. You're point? Plenty of nice hoods in Memphis and the surrounding area. Those FedEx pilots have to live somewhere

Atlwarrior wrote:

No Delta would have kept Memphis open if that was the case. ATL still has plenty of flight capacity, but does need to expand to handle more people.

That was precisely my though. The example of Memphis (especially directly after the NW merger), and considerably - when RDU was developed in the years since then, DL confirmed the supremacy of ATL, above all others.

What I cannot understand, though - is why would DL want to 'relieve' a fortress hub, that is not at capacity? While CLT might be gorgeous, newer (after renovations are complete), and cheap (-er, than DL, at ATL?) - ATL has proven, for decades, to be able to work for DL in a way that makes it the most advantageous hub in the region.

If there were a credible source, to confirm that DL would be interested in greater market access at CLT, I could see that. A 'reliever' hub concept, though - could be seen as a contract negotiation tactic to lower (or hasten conversations about the higher) costs at ATL, for DL.

CLTDAL wrote:

MEM is not CLT. Charlotte is a beautiful City with so much growth going on....they predict the City to be considered a "Major US City" within the next 3-5 years according to the local news here. Everywhere you look- building!!! Infrastructure is being developed to better serve the city and its residents: Widening of all the freeways, the light rail expansion and even toll roads. Apartments are going up in a day and homes are being built everywhere. Not to mention that the skyline is rapidly expanding!!! Charlotte has it going on. WHY would Delta not want a piece of that??? Remember, they co-existed in ATL with AirTran for years....Considering CLT has a HUB carrier, AA....who is to say that Delta could not survive as a quality "alternative " carrier to AA??? Customers want a choice....and the low cost carriers in CLT only fly to a handful of places.....and yes, Delta IS opening a SkyClub in CLT soon.

Thought this was gonna turn into another XNA pitch. scale down the infrastructure that's being built to 1% of Charlotte, with the same amount of civic pride & booster-ism and the original thread starter's lack of knowledge how the industry work, and it's the new a.net

CLTDAL wrote:

MEM is not CLT. Charlotte is a beautiful City with so much growth going on....they predict the City to be considered a "Major US City" within the next 3-5 years according to the local news here. Everywhere you look- building!!! Infrastructure is being developed to better serve the city and its residents: Widening of all the freeways, the light rail expansion and even toll roads. Apartments are going up in a day and homes are being built everywhere. Not to mention that the skyline is rapidly expanding!!! Charlotte has it going on. WHY would Delta not want a piece of that??? Remember, they co-existed in ATL with AirTran for years....Considering CLT has a HUB carrier, AA....who is to say that Delta could not survive as a quality "alternative " carrier to AA??? Customers want a choice....and the low cost carriers in CLT only fly to a handful of places.....and yes, Delta IS opening a SkyClub in CLT soon.

Two points: CLT is not ATL and AA is not FL, comparing apples to oranges.

CLTDAL wrote:

MEM is not CLT. Charlotte is a beautiful City with so much growth going on....they predict the City to be considered a "Major US City" within the next 3-5 years according to the local news here. Everywhere you look- building!!! Infrastructure is being developed to better serve the city and its residents: Widening of all the freeways, the light rail expansion and even toll roads. Apartments are going up in a day and homes are being built everywhere. Not to mention that the skyline is rapidly expanding!!! Charlotte has it going on. WHY would Delta not want a piece of that??? Remember, they co-existed in ATL with AirTran for years....Considering CLT has a HUB carrier, AA....who is to say that Delta could not survive as a quality "alternative " carrier to AA??? Customers want a choice....and the low cost carriers in CLT only fly to a handful of places.....and yes, Delta IS opening a SkyClub in CLT soon.

Because there isn't a big enough piece to go after. At the end of the day, the Charlotte metro is ~2.5 million. The landscape is littered with cities of that size that had hubs (CVG, CLE, STL, MEM just to name a few). SLC is the only hub with a smaller population. Yes, CLT is a growing city but not that much. I admittedly assumed this hub would shrink or go away with the merger mostly because of the fact that it has a low population and relies heavily on 50 seaters. They've been able to make it work given the extremely low cost of operating here. The airport is operating a good balance right now but as noted on the thread regarding added int'l expansion at CLT, there's not a lot of opportunity left here. I think the hub will see some adds to LAA cities that aren't served here yet as gate capacity frees up but with the additional gates, I could see some expansion by ULCC's that could be a negative for AA and the hub. Very delicate balance. As the city continues to grow, more things could be added but we're actually pretty connected as a hub so the changes might be more gauge or frequency. Maybe an additional European flight (likely seasonal) in 5 years.

CLTDAL wrote:

MEM is not CLT. Charlotte is a beautiful City with so much growth going on....they predict the City to be considered a "Major US City" within the next 3-5 years according to the local news here. Everywhere you look- building!!! Infrastructure is being developed to better serve the city and its residents: Widening of all the freeways, the light rail expansion and even toll roads. Apartments are going up in a day and homes are being built everywhere. Not to mention that the skyline is rapidly expanding!!! Charlotte has it going on. WHY would Delta not want a piece of that??? Remember, they co-existed in ATL with AirTran for years....Considering CLT has a HUB carrier, AA....who is to say that Delta could not survive as a quality "alternative " carrier to AA??? Customers want a choice....and the low cost carriers in CLT only fly to a handful of places.....and yes, Delta IS opening a SkyClub in CLT soon.

You keep trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. You want DL to open a crew base. You think DL tried to massively grow in CLT. DL is not opening a crew base nor expanding significantly in CLT and, even in the face of having it explained to you WHY those things aren't true, you still think there is some secret massive DL expansion coming to CLT.

Good luck to you. Enjoy Charlotte.

Give the OP a break. Crew base probably not.
However, CLT to BOS AUS LAX and SEA, quite possible.

CLT was my home airport until I left for a job at DL in 1971. I got my pilots license there in 1970, kept up my flying out of there for awhile until I moved to SFO. When the demise of EA began, I probably was one of the first to start a letter writing campaign to the home office and was told, it's too close to ATL (which it is). As it turned out, PI saw the "light" as did it successors US and now AA and has made quite a hub of it...more than I ever expected. As for DL doing much of anything there, it's probably not going to happen to any great extent except maybe as a reliever of sorts when things go bad at "Mecca" as it does on occasion. CLT does have the "D" concourse which could possibly handle customs clearance as well as feed the IROPS to AA as the ticketing agreement between the two rivals has been reinstated. It does in some cases create more chaos when flights to ATL are diverted to other airports, yet those flights still have to end up in ATL to get the aircraft where they need to be. On the other hand, some of the "diversion" airports could ease some of that chaos if there are alternatives to transiting ATL as afterall about 65% of ATL's traffic is connecting. That's not to say that RDU and/or BNA couldn't do some of the same except that the feed by AA to the rest of the US from CLT is only surpassed by DL in ATL as far as the Southeast is concerned.