Quote:
Originally Posted by jimworcs
AirTran nibbles at the edges with small levels (relatively) of business travel and new markets for low cost leisure travellers, who are willing to bend to the slots and timings of low cost and accept significantly lower levels of service.
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I don't know what you are talking about and quite frankly neither do you. AirTran is not as big a carrier as Delta, but they certainly do not offer a "significantly lower levels of service". Also AirTran is bigger with business traveler's than leisure travelers for the most part.
But we are kind of looking at just one part of the whole industry. The other thing is it's not the hub cities that have lack of competition so much as some of the small airports in the US that only have 2 or 3 airlines serving it. Those are where the high fares are found, so your whole argument of big hubs being a problem is flawed.
Looking at Atlanta, what about a market such as Miami to Atlanta. Both are big hubs for major airlines. Atlanta has Delta and AirTran, Miami has American. Right there are 3 airlines competing head to head with each other. And in fact, in every hub city there are at least two airlines that go head to head, as they each fly non stop to each other's hub.
Back to Miami-Atlanta, you still have US Airways, as an example. They don't fly non-stop, but they do connect through Charlotte. But even being a connecting carrier on that market, they are still competition.
Ultimately every hub airport has many airlines flying into it. They are a hub for one or two airlines simply because of the number of connecting flights. You said that Chicago is a duopoly having American and United. But O'hare still has many other airlines that fly there, and obviously they can fill enough seats to turn a profit or they wouldn't fly there at all. And in that example, UA and AA still have competition from carriers like Southwest and AirTran. Even though those airlines fly out of Midway as opposed to O'hare, many business travelers prefer Midway airport as it's closer to the city center.
Ultimately Jim, your whole side trip about competition in hubs is moot to the OP anyway - BDL and PBI neither one are hubs for any airline.