incitatus wrote:

JAMBOJET wrote:

FSDan did a great thread on this overall topic:
AA at ORD: 40% mainline
viewtopic.php?t=1420609

UA at ORD: 43.6% mainline
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1420611

These are relevant stats but I prefer a bit of a modified metric: What percentage non-hub flights are mainline? As a reference, DL in LGA is heavy on hub flying, especially ATL. Almost everything else non-hub, non-Florida is regional.

Another reference for comparison is seats per departure. At ORD AA is at 104, and UA is at 101.

Which is particularly significant since UA has domestic 77As seating about 360 and AA has nothing close.

GSPSPOT wrote:

bigb wrote:

GSPSPOT wrote:

What gets me about AA being so RJ-heavy at ORD is that from MKE (admittedly ridiculously close to ORD to begin with), AA is exclusively CR2, while UA mixes RJs (small and large) and mainline as large as 739s during the summer on the very same route. Where is the love, AA? Grrrrr….

That’s not true with AA running exclusive CR2s to ORD. Skywest and Envoy have ran 70s in and out of MKE to ORD. The only CR2s AA runs out of MKE will probably be to DCA as that is the main CR2 base for AA (PSA).

That must have started very recently.

Negative, PSA hasn't ran CR2s MKE-ORD in like ever..... Considering we are the only AA regional that operates CR2. The only way you saw CR2 in MKE is if they ran MKE-DCA.

You may see the occasional ERJ-145 from Envoy MKE-ORD and Piedmont MKE-PHL in non-peak times. But not CR2s

Skywest is a regional carrier for American Airlines (as American Eagle), Delta Air Lines (as Delta Connection), Alaska Airlines (as Alaska SkyWest) and United Airlines (as United Express). They have 141 E175 with 17 on order and an additional 100 E175-2 on order.

I wonder if an E175 airline could work based in a central USA airport. BNA (Nashville). Ranges to all major airports are 2000 miles or less. The longest E175 flight in April 2019 was 1973 miles (SkyWest Airlines Inc. PDX to BNA see below), but the longest daily flight was 1772 miles( also on SkyWest).

BNA is 54% Southwest Airlines so if SkyWest were to try and compete with Southwest
It would not be running afoul of it's legacy carriers if it stays off their routes
United Airlines Chicago–O'Hare, Denver, Houston–Intercontinental, Newark, Washington–Dulles, San Francisco
United Express Chicago–O'Hare, Denver, Houston–Intercontinental, Newark, Washington–Dulles
Delta Air Lines Atlanta, Boston (begins May 1, 2020), Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Salt Lake City, Seattle/Tacoma | Seasonal: Cancún
American Airlines Charlotte, Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington–National Seasonal: Chicago–O'Hare ]
American Eagle Charlotte, Chicago–O'Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, New York–JFK, New York–LaGuardia, Philadelphia, Washington–National
Alaska Airlines Seattle/Tacoma

BNA to major airports in miles
ATL 214
CLT 328
MDW 395
ORD 409
DTW 456
IAD 542
DCA 562
BWI 587
TPA 612
MCO 616
DFW 631
IAH 657
PHL 675
MSP 695
EWR 748
LGA 764
JFK 765
FLL 793
MIA 806
BOS 942
DEN 1013
SLC 1404
PHX 1449
LAS 1587
SAN 1751
LAX 1797
SFO 1968
PDX 1973 --- longest E175 flight in April 2019
SEA 1978

Italianflyer wrote:

I'm going out on a limb here (so please don't rip me if my logic is flawed) but I think it's a combination of geography and demographics. Geographically speaking, Chicago is within 2.5 hours flying time of allot of US & Canadian population centers. Perfectly acceptable for RJ flying and even more so on 170/75s. The demographics come in with ORD being one of the top business O&D markets. You can't offer dawn to dusk frequency and be willing to fly 2/3 empty A320s at 2pm on a Wednesday.... profitably.

This exactly. It’s all about the size of markets feeding the hub. Delta has an advantage in the Midwest. Northwest was less reliant on the RJs out of MSP/DTW so they had a greater advantage on small market capacity running DC-9s vs. 50 seaters on AA/UA out of ORD and DL out of CVG. With the merger, Delta inherited and maintained that control. They shuddered CVG and Midwest Express, the other DC-9 operator in the region, had collapsed with Frontier not knowing what to do with itself in MKE. AA/UA weren’t in a financial position to respond to the DL/NW merger in terms of taking advantage of the potential void that opened up for a short period of time. It’s why you see Delta mainline into places like Fargo and Rapid City where AA/UA are still operating 50 seaters.

muralir wrote:

airzona11 wrote:

ORD is in a great hub location, is there not a point where AA is doing a good job connection all the points without dumping capacity ? AA UA WN all have huge ORD hubs. AA is able to connect all the dots and then some beyond UA/WN with the smaller RJs. This seems like a great use of RJs.

Agreed. This is probably the most important factor. Chicago has 3 hubs, and at least two of them (UA / AA) run similar hub-n-spoke models and view frequency as a competitive advantage. That means inevitably the traffic from any specific city will be split and requires smaller flights to maintain frequency.

The two other factors I'd add are:
1) there are a ton of small Midwestern cities that are large enough to need service but can't sustain mainline *and* are too far spread out to drive to a larger city. This, IMHO, is key. There are plenty of small towns on the east and west coasts, but a lot of them are within driving distance to a big city, which means you don't need much air service to them. The Midwest is far more spread out, making air service to them viable as long as you use a smaller plane.

2) as an earlier poster mentioned, ORD has enough runway capacity that you actually *can* run a bunch of RJs. That doesn't mean they waste that capacity. It means that ORD is preferred for linking all those small towns rather than wasting a slot at one of their other, more constrained hubs. For example, despite UA having a hub at EWR, many of the smaller towns in the east get routed through ORD despite often being a slight backtrack. This is because UA simply doesn't have the slots to fly a bunch of small RJs into EWR and therefore tries to aggregate those thin connection flows through ORD instead. I'm sure AA does this as well with the constraints they have in e.g. PHL.

What do you consider the 3rd Chicago HUB?

rbavfan wrote:

What do you consider the 3rd Chicago HUB?

I think that the responder means that there are 3 airlines that have hubs in 2 chicago airports, or to use Southwest's terminology, MDW is Southwest's busiest operating base.

ORD and MDW are the closes LARGE airports to the population center

The four closest MEDIUM airports to the population center are
STL 143 miles
MCI 173 miles
OMA 319 miles
BNA 335 miles

If you are near the population center a RJ can reach most of the important airports in CONUS.

Range
E170 2,150nmi
E175 2,200nmi
E190 2,450nmi
E195 2,300nmi

PacoMartin wrote:

rbavfan wrote:

What do you consider the 3rd Chicago HUB?

I think that the responder means that there are 3 airlines that have hubs in 2 chicago airports, or to use Southwest's terminology, MDW is Southwest's busiest operating base.

ORD and MDW are the closes LARGE airports to the population center

The four closest MEDIUM airports to the population center are
STL 143 miles
MCI 173 miles
OMA 319 miles
BNA 335 miles

If you are near the population center a RJ can reach most of the important airports in CONUS.

Range
E170 2,150nmi
E175 2,200nmi
E190 2,450nmi
E195 2,300nmi

Surely MKE should be on that list as well

bigb wrote:

Surely MKE should be on that list as well

Distance from the population center to each airport (MEDIUM size airports)
STL 143 miles
MCI 173 miles
OMA 319 miles
BNA 335 miles
MKE 446 miles

https://blog.globalair.com/image.axd?pi ... gories.jpg
FAA classifies 30 airports as LARGE, 31 airports as MEDIUM, and 69 airports as SMALL

Great Lake Regions has ORD, MDW, MSP, and DTW as LARGE airports

The three largest MEDIUM airports are BNA, DAL, and AUS

bigb wrote:

GSPSPOT wrote:

bigb wrote:

That’s not true with AA running exclusive CR2s to ORD. Skywest and Envoy have ran 70s in and out of MKE to ORD. The only CR2s AA runs out of MKE will probably be to DCA as that is the main CR2 base for AA (PSA).

That must have started very recently.

Negative, PSA hasn't ran CR2s MKE-ORD in like ever..... Considering we are the only AA regional that operates CR2. The only way you saw CR2 in MKE is if they ran MKE-DCA.

You may see the occasional ERJ-145 from Envoy MKE-ORD and Piedmont MKE-PHL in non-peak times. But not CR2s

Well Skywest also flys the CRJ2 and they do fly ORD-MKE like 7 times a day. They also fly to a handful of other cities with the CRJ2.

PacoMartin wrote:

bigb wrote:

Surely MKE should be on that list as well

Distance from the population center to each airport (MEDIUM size airports)
STL 143 miles
MCI 173 miles
OMA 319 miles
BNA 335 miles
MKE 446 miles

https://blog.globalair.com/image.axd?pi ... gories.jpg
FAA classifies 30 airports as LARGE, 31 airports as MEDIUM, and 69 airports as SMALL

Great Lake Regions has ORD, MDW, MSP, and DTW as LARGE airports

The three largest MEDIUM airports are BNA, DAL, and AUS

The airport category list is a bit misleading and a funky way of categorizing airports. They use the metric for grant apportionment. When MKE, CVG, CLE and STL collapsed as hubs, they fell in ranking. MKE and CLE were always at the top of medium hubs, but STL and CVG were large hub. All four are really medium size markets based on local demand. The FAA needs review the way it categorizes airports. They should categorize them by O&D only and exclude the connecting pax for better context. For grant apportionment they can use pax for landslide apportionment and ops for airside apportionment. They use cargo as a metric for apportionment which is pretty stupid, but it’s been used for decades so there it sits. Cargo is such a small component unless you’re a FedEx or UPS hub, but the impact is on the airside so they would get greater airside apportionment. For context, if you could get people to use Des Moines as a mini hub, it would bump them up to medium hub status pretty quickly even though it’s clear they aren’t a medium size market. If they used the O&D method, the top 5 would be LAX, ORD, MCO, DEN and ATL in that order. A very different picture.

DL717 wrote:

If they used the O&D method, the top 5 would be LAX, ORD, MCO, DEN and ATL in that order. A very different picture.

Where did you get that list from? According to this article the list goes LAX, JFK, LAS, SFO, MCO, ORD, DEN, ATL (2016).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/20 ... 0f56777966

bigb wrote:

Negative, PSA hasn't ran CR2s MKE-ORD in like ever..... Considering we are the only AA regional that operates CR2. The only way you saw CR2 in MKE is if they ran MKE-DCA.

You may see the occasional ERJ-145 from Envoy MKE-ORD and Piedmont MKE-PHL in non-peak times. But not CR2s

Actually, until recently, OO did operate CR2s on ORD-MKE for AA. They also regularly operated markets such as ORD-YUL and ORD-ICT using CR2s. Those operations have been drawing down, although you can still find OO CR2s operating ORD-MEI for Eagle into the foreseeable future.

Midway with WN draws lots of the the business O&D traffic, no long commute to ORD, direct flights to the adjacent Midwest cities are covered.

ORD is becoming a great hub. On its spokes are lots of travelers connecting to other places, the spoke O&D is in WN going to Chicago. But for Cedar Rapids and Peoria with 1 stop there are a hundred+ destinations around the world.

It is weird to realize that prior to the introduction of RJs and fuel price spikes in the early 2000's, M80's &F100's dominated the schedule in ORD for AA. I remember in the 1990's the 5x MCI-ORD were a mix of M80's and 727's but as RJ's came along, the economics of running 2/3's full mainline service didn't make sense. So, while nostalgia may have us remember a mainline fortress hub, today, with WN built up, improved options for aircraft by airlines (RJs), UA getting stronger, it leads to this natural right sizing. I remember the billboard right outside of ORD used to tout that AA had the most european non-stops from ORD.

DL717 wrote:

The airport category list is a bit misleading and a funky way of categorizing airports. They use the metric for grant apportionment. When MKE, CVG, CLE and STL collapsed as hubs, they fell in ranking. MKE and CLE were always at the top of medium hubs, but STL and CVG were large hub. All four are really medium size markets based on local demand. The FAA needs review the way it categorizes airports.

Embraer jets entered into service about two decades after the B737 Classic series, and they have a similar range
E170/E175/E190/E195 2,150/2,200/2,450/2,300 nmi
737-300/400/500 2,255/2,060/2,375 nmi

The B737 NG began deliveries on 17. Dec. 1997, so prior to that you pretty much had to have a hub near the population center like STL or CVG.
The range of the E175-E2 is 2,017 nmi , which is actually slightly shorter than the oirignal E175 range of 2,200 nmi.

If SkyWest Airlines were to launch an independent airline that competed, but didn't challenge there role as express jet to the big airlines, it would have to hugged from an airport near the center of population. Perhaps it would resurrect STL as a hub.

cledaybuck wrote:

DL717 wrote:

If they used the O&D method, the top 5 would be LAX, ORD, MCO, DEN and ATL in that order. A very different picture.

Where did you get that list from? According to this article the list goes LAX, JFK, LAS, SFO, MCO, ORD, DEN, ATL (2016).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/20 ... 0f56777966

2018 T-100.

Bad data in the article. JFK had 30 million local pax in 2016. LAX had 48 million. ORD 37, LAS 35, ATL 34, DEN 34, MCO 34, SFO 33.

Center of Population
Indiana 1890-1940
Illinois 1950-1970
Missouri 1980-2010

Missouri Airports
STL St. Louis
MCI Kansas City
SGF Springfield

It is very unlikely for Skywest Airlines to start an independent operation to compete with Southwest. Moxy Airline may launch with a fleet comprised of Embraer E195s but will switch to Airbus 220. The Airbus 220 has a range comparable to the NG, so it is far less sensitive to having a hub near the population center.

The plan is when the Max’s get back in the air it will free up A319s which will take the place of the RJs at ORD.

This exactly. It’s all about the size of markets feeding the hub. Delta has an advantage in the Midwest. Northwest was less reliant on the RJs out of MSP/DTW so they had a greater advantage on small market capacity running DC-9s vs. 50 seaters on AA/UA out of ORD and DL out of CVG. With the merger, Delta inherited and maintained that control. They shuddered CVG and Midwest Express, the other DC-9 operator in the region, had collapsed with Frontier not knowing what to do with itself in MKE. AA/UA weren’t in a financial position to respond to the DL/NW merger in terms of taking advantage of the potential void that opened up for a short period of time. It’s why you see Delta mainline into places like Fargo and Rapid City where AA/UA are still operating 50 seaters.[/quote]
Fargo no, but RAP gets mainline from UA from ORD in the summer. Been that way for about the last 10 years.

Planeboy17 wrote:

This exactly. It’s all about the size of markets feeding the hub. Delta has an advantage in the Midwest. Northwest was less reliant on the RJs out of MSP/DTW so they had a greater advantage on small market capacity running DC-9s vs. 50 seaters on AA/UA out of ORD and DL out of CVG. With the merger, Delta inherited and maintained that control. They shuddered CVG and Midwest Express, the other DC-9 operator in the region, had collapsed with Frontier not knowing what to do with itself in MKE. AA/UA weren’t in a financial position to respond to the DL/NW merger in terms of taking advantage of the potential void that opened up for a short period of time. It’s why you see Delta mainline into places like Fargo and Rapid City where AA/UA are still operating 50 seaters.

Fargo no, but RAP gets mainline from UA from ORD in the summer. Been that way for about the last 10 years.

Seasonal mainline. DLs first two flights out of Fargo are an A319 and an A321. RAP is a 717. Today.

Amchi757300 wrote:

LAXdude1023 wrote:

Its not always bad either. I purposely seek out the E175 as opposed to mainline aircraft. The E145 and CRJ-200 is a completely different story.

Genuinely curious what your rationale is for E175 > Mainline

For the E75 specifically, no middle seats in economy, and potentially single seat up front. Potentially faster egress for tight connections due to less pax.