The shrinking hub

When Delta and Northwest Airlines announced their merger, then Northwest boss Doug Steenland said Delta’s hub in Cincinnati and Northwest’s hub in Memphis would be kept intact. “We have the right size of operation to make Memphis profitable” he said in April 2008. All of the hubs have a “very secure future.”

Some people thought that assurance was made for political reasons. No sense upsetting a congressman or senator who could raise anti-trust objections. But Steenland insisted the statement wasn’t about politics.

Memphis has seen its traffic grow but it looks like Cincinnati is becoming a hub in name only, according to some numbers-crunching by The Cranky Flier.

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