USAirways, Delta and Charlotte »
It seems to me that the announcement of USAirways attempting to purchase Delta is good for just about everyone, with the possible exception of Charlotte. Now those of you who don't live in Charlotte may not care, and that's certainly okay. But I'm pretty certain that the one thing such a link-up will do is cut service at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport pretty dramatically.
They say that the Charlotte airport is currently the 11th busiest in the nation, by passenger volume. This isn't bad, but when the city is the 20th largest by population, it would seem that something isn't quite right about that. Those "in the know" consider Charlotte "vulnerable" for this reason.
The answer is, quite simply, that most of the traffic in the airport doesn't originate here. It simply flies through here, due to the USAirways hub. How does that happen?
Simple. People coming from elsewhere fly through Charlotte to get someplace else - typically smaller cities that don't have their own airport large enough to have a direct connection. It's the classic "hub and spoke" concept of air travel.
So why is it bad that USAirways wants to gobble up Delta? Didn't they just merge with America West, and the airport is still going strong (if not even more so than it was)? Absolutely. But there was one problem there. America West had no hub anywhere near Charlotte. They were based in Phoenix. Charlotte is nearly 1800 miles from Phoenix. That's a solid four hour flight.
But it's different with Delta. Delta's primary hub is in Atlanta. It doesn't even take four hours to drive there. A flight is listed as just over an hour, but you have to realize that includes the taxi to and from the gate, and because Atlanta is so congested, it includes delays as well. The actual flight time is well less than one hour - you're often just getting to altitude when the descent starts.
There is no way that a merged airline will have the need to keep two hubs of that size that close together. It just makes no sense. If anything, I could see them moving the larger jets to Atlanta and the smaller jets and regional flights to Charlotte - making "Charlanta" a sort of "superhub" - they could even install a high-speed railway system so you didn't have to bother with taking a flight between the two (it might even be faster - getting from one terminal in Atlanta to another is always a pain). But there is no way that Charlotte will have the selection of flights that it enjoys today if this goes through.
Does that mean that the merger is a bad thing? Not necessarily. But if you are living in Charlotte because of the nonstop flights that it offers, and the convenience of the airport, I hope you're not getting too used to it.
