Originally Posted by
iFlyRC
CRJ 900 is 76-79 seats, 737 is around 140? Where do you get 6 or 7 RJ's? Also, frequency is important, more daily flights means more flying passengers. People complain about Spirit, but it's not their seating, it's the number of available flights and getting stuck if a flight cancels. Also that article completely fails to account for how a 50 seat airplane actually will raise the cost of a seat for certain markets simply because there's fewer available seats.
737-8 is over 150 pax. That's 3 RJ's into a hub and 3 leaving the hub. 6 departures to carry the same amount of people as a direct flight. Upgageing will also cut jobs and regional size. The article didn't say they were getting rid of hubs, so it won't be like Spirit. He's basically saying there going to consolidate the current inventory of seats like I mentioned above. The goal is to increase revenue without adding seats. But you are right, this didn't happen when there were 8 airlines where now only 4 exist. The networks are so large that you wouldn't be stranded like Sprit. It makes sense that any town large enough to have service to more than one hub on the same network, could have point to point flights on the most popular parings. Rual towns with only service to 1 hub from each network will still be the same hub system.