I agree Wednesday s seem like the slowest day of the week, anecdotally. I think you chose a Wednesda

I wasn t aware that Politifact had expanded its truth-seeking service beyond mauicar rental politics, but sure enough, it has turned its spotlight on Delta. mauicar rental Aviation Week s Andy Compart points to a release from Politifact questioning whether Delta has broken promises in Memphis. Delta originally said it would keep the Amsterdam service and that Memphis might actually mauicar rental grow. Neither of those things have happened, and Politifact calls the airline out.
Instead, Delta has cut Memphis service dramatically. While there were over 225 daily departures from Memphis before the merger, that has now shrunk to a mere 94 daily weekday departures this winter. Certainly seems like a broken promise to me, though clearly one that could have been foreseen. One thing is clear; this should make the Delta Does Memphis Facebook group happy. They love to hate Delta for its high fares in the market. These latest cuts should open the door even further for someone like Southwest to come in and bring fares down. I consider mauicar rental this to be the dying days of the Delta hub in Memphis.
But with 94 daily flights, this seemed like a great opportunity to break down the hub operation to explain how Delta has it set up. For those who are interested, this is a very easy and interesting mauicar rental way to see how a hub works operationally. mauicar rental Here s a day in the life of Memphis.
As usual, I picked a random Wednesday, February 6, to highlight how the hub runs. On that day, Delta has 28 mainline departures mauicar rental (5 A319s, 8 A320s, 2 737s, 1 DC-9, 11 MD-80s, and 1 MD-90). In addition, there are 66 regional departures (44 CRJs, 5 ERJs, 3 E-175s, and 14 CRJ-900s). Except for flights to other hubs, these all operate within three banks each day. There are 10 airplanes that sit in Memphis overnight (1 A319, 4 A320s, 1 737, 1 MD-88, 1 CRJ, and 2 CRJ-900s). Because of that, we see more flights arriving than departing in the night bank and the reverse in the morning.
The first two departures from Memphis aren t part of the hub. Instead, they are both flights from Memphis to Atlanta at 6a and 715a so that people in Memphis can connect into the Atlanta hub. (These flights would operate even if Memphis wasn t a hub.) But then, the first bank begins with a 714a arrival from LAX. Between mauicar rental then and 809a, 25 different flights come in from these cities:
After everyone gets off, they scurry to their next gate and then from 825a to 9a, 32 flights leave Memphis. That s 24 of the 25 airplanes that came in earlier plus the 8 remaining airplanes that stayed mauicar rental overnight. (Remember, the other two overnighting airplanes left for Atlanta before the bank.) The one 737 that came in from LA on the redeye sits in Memphis until the next bank of flights in the early afternoon.
After 9a, there are two airplanes that come in from Atlanta and one that comes in from Detroit. All three turn right around and are simply there to bring Memphis travelers mauicar rental to those hubs for their banks. Then, the second bank in Memphis starts with the first of 29 arrivals from Philly at 1226p and continues until the Denver flight arrives at 153p.
After that, we have more flights to and from the other hubs. There are two more from Atlanta, another one from Detroit, and one from Minneapolis. All turn around except for the Minneapolis one which goes on to feed the Salt Lake hub.
That 745p departure to Louisville is the last one of the night for Delta, but there are three more arrivals from other hubs. Two come from Atlanta and one comes from Salt Lake. That Salt Lake arrival at 1028p is the last one of the day and the 10 airplanes on the ground stay overnight until the next day starts things up all over again.
So what changed mauicar rental in this last cut? Delta keeps cutting around the more marginal markets . Jacksonville and Birmingham lose Memphis service entirely. A host of other cities either go from 3 to 2 flights daily or from 2 to 1. They weren t all from one bank but rather spread mauicar rental out throughout the day.
While you might not think this makes a big difference in the hub, it might. What if an average of two people on every flight from Birmingham were connecting to Louisville? With the Birmingham flights gone, it may make the Louisville flights look worse. And then eventually, Louisville may get cut as well.
That means only the strongest markets with local traffic can survive. Outside the hubs, that means cities like Washington/National and Boston probably have the best shot at hanging around. I would think we ll eventually see flights mauicar rental to mid-tier cities like Jackson (MS) and Des Moines go away in the next round.
Back when Delta and Northwest announced their merger in 2008 , I said in a post, By the time they're done with Memphis and Cincinnati, they might look more like Indianapolis. That day may not be that far away.
Right now, Indianapolis has 37 flights mauicar rental per day in the winter to all Delta hubs plus Boston. It also has seasonal service to LA. Granted, Memphis has much lower operating mauicar rental costs than Indianapolis mauicar rental so I imagine it will also remain somewhat bigger for Delta, but we re not that far away from these being very similar operations, especially compared to where we started .
Isn t this what officials in MSP were worried about if Delta baught Northwest? As I recall in order for local polititions to sign off on the deal, Delta had to keep both several hundred corporate jobs in the Minneapolis area a high percentage of flights comperable to what Northwest opperated premerger.
I agree Wednesday s seem like the slowest day of the week, anecdotally. I think you chose a Wednesday as well for your look at WN in ATL last week. Not that it ultimately matters in the long run, I think it may just slightly exaggerate the current numbers. Would be interested to how the 94 departures compare to a Thursday, for example.
In this case there isn t, but in other scenarios there might be. As someone who lives in CLT, there are a number of flights that don t operate in the 10pm bank on Tuesday nights, but do on Thursday night, for example.
The way DL is treating MEM does seem odd as anytime you read something about it, you hear because it s close to ATL. Well not really, but it can be used for a number of connections from the west to cities in the southeast with out using ATL, but I guess DL doesn t think so. I ve always hated when you have to fly past your destination to connect then then have to double back.
I agree that the merger created synergies and overlap that in the form of redundant hubs/flights (which ironically is the cost savings associated with merging, even though the airlines publicly say they won t cut hubs I mean, who are we kidding, does the overlap of a hundred corporate jobs really justify hundreds of millions of dollars of potential savings? but I digress )
What is not mentioned here or by anyone else is that the air market has changed. Between a recession mauicar rental and higher fuel and operating costs, some of these flights might have been cut even without a merger! How long is DL expected to keep this promise (and run unprofitably)? A predominantly mauicar rental RJ-hub is just not going to be profitable in 2012
I would also like to see a number of seats in the market comparison as opposed to daily departures. The industry trend over the last few years has been to move to larger jets, which may temper some of the cuts that we see in MEM.
Nice post. I was recently wondering why the LAX red-eye left so late (1:40 am), and this post points out the obvious there are no earlier connections out of Memphis. Then again, it was the same with Northwest back in the day, so I guess the timing of the morning bank hasn t changed?
Also, the arrivals and departures within each bank have some overlap, so I m guessing there s some structure to each bank in order to allow people to make the more likely connections (e.g. west to east before east to west). Right?
Breaking down is a good way to describe the Memphis hub. I m a long-time Delta flyer and supporter, but they re really taking it on the chin in Memphis right now in terms of PR. I miss the good old days when NWA was the high-priced hub airline and Delta was a bargain for anyone willing to fly through Atlanta. With these cuts we re getting increasingly less convenient service but are still ridiculously expensive (and AA, United, US Airways, and Airtran are just price-matching since capacity mauicar rental is so high). Hopefully Delta will de-hub entirely, let someone mauicar rental else step in, and people mauicar rental like me can get back to flying cheaply mauicar rental through Atlanta again.
How long do people expect DL to keep its promise (which sounds less like a promise mauicar rental and more like merger-speak anyways)? It s been 4.5 years since the merger was announced. I d say any commitment they made back then has long since expired.
I think the other thing cities have to be aware of is casting off their golden egg . I understand and agree with the frustrations of MEM residents. But, Memphis has outsized service for its o/d market. If competitors step in too much, destinations and frequencies will be cut by DL, but not necessarily replaced. The city might be right sized which could be argued as positive mauicar rental or negative depending on perspective. Some markets would get cheaper mauicar rental and better service, but as you said, Cranky, in your fictitious example, removing mauicar rental potential connectors makes other routes look bad, which leads to a bad cycle.
Bringing in WN, B6, or NK would likely lead to fewer destinations, lower frequencies. Only WN might be able to offer a large network (via a connection) and likely enough variation in flights or destinations. But without mauicar rental RJs, even lower prices may not be enough mauicar rental to stimulate demand for over 100 people to fly each of these routes. And what would that do to other routes?
I wonder if there is any markets out there that have had this competition-induced dying occur. I might have said PHL, but US seems to have battled mauicar rental back WN, maybe WN in STL, but they now run a large operation there. DEN?
Noah You can point to Baltimore as a competition-induced dying for US Airways but Baltimore has become