viper548

PHX is more like CLE for AA

Monkeyfly

Just showing what a narrow body hub might look like vs. what it takes to have over 1000 pilots in base. FWIW.

Hopefully PHX will never go the way of Cleveland...less than 200 pilots.

DesertDog

The USA’s best airport? Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. The worst are the three big airports serving New York City.

Those are the findings of ThePointsGuy travel site, which crunched data on on-time flights, amenities and other items to rank the nation’s 30 busiest airports.

At the top was Phoenix, a hub for American Airlines and a major base for Southwest.

“Though Phoenix didn’t take the top spot in any single category (except how quickly you can drive to and from downtown), it was consistently among the best scorers in almost all categories, with excellent flight delay and flight cancellation scores, a convenient light rail, a high number of restaurants and bars for its level of passenger traffic and free Wi-Fi,” ThePointsGuy website said about what helped the airport’s ranking. “About the worst thing that could be said about Sky Harbor, apparently, is it could stand to add more lounges.”

Spoiler

approx. 2% less flying out of PHX
For a good laugh see the most dogmatic in the beginning of the thread.
The only question remaining is judging the magnitude of the moab.

Dashdog

Substitute Pittsburgh for Phoenix in that description.
A great airport does not necessarily make a great hub.

Sliceback

Compare and contrast PIT vs PHX economic size.

PHX regional GDP is 60% greater than PIT's. The market dynamics might be different.

PHX is 73% larger (regional GDP) than CLE.

CLE is 92% of PIT's regional GDP. Or PIT is 9% larger than CLE.

Hueypilot

I don't think we'll see PHX close anytime soon, nor will we see a large reduction in flying in and out of PHX unless a fairly drastic amount of room opens at LAX. Lots of connecting traffic there that can't be moved to LAX and DFW is too far east to justify.

It would be nice to have a west coast base located more towards the PNW, though. But I doubt we'll see that anytime during my career.

Saul Rosenberg

I think you're wrong. This initial shrinkage -- disguised by management's ploy that "we're just starting the flights through PHX from other bases" -- is just phase one. Think about this rationally: if flying 30 more flights into PHX every morning from LAX and DFW were a good idea, why wouldn't AA have done this before? PHX sucks and the bean counters would love to shut it down. They will probably do so in stages so that all the PHX pilots with displacement rights don't run up too much of a training bubble tab. Anyone actually wanting to live and fly out of PHX should probably not apply to AA....guys hired 11 years ago are still bottom feeder FO's, USAir pilots hired in the late 1990's would sit at about 75% down the FO list there, and the TWA guys hired in 2000 can't even hold it. PHX is both senior and shrinking, which is bad for everyone involved.

flyinawa

As much as I would love to tell you to cram it...
I'm afraid you're probably right. It's not that Phoenix isn't a viable hub at it's current size, it's just not a legacy AA base and therefore doesn't fit into the AA playbook as a base. OTOH, they don't want to give it to Southwest either so they'll keep the number of flights pretty consistent. I wouldn't be surprised to see an increase the RJ flying. It's not a good thing for us as a group regardless of which of the three carriers you arrived from. Downsizing never is.

blastoff

Only if AA acquires 2X the real estate it has now in LAX could PHX be threatened as a hub. It would probably require United completely pulling down its LAX hub and consolidating in SFO...or LAWA rebuilding the whole airport (there has been talk). Could be next year, could be decades for that to play out. Some shrinkage and/or lots of RJ's probably a more likely scenario.