That may be, but it's more likely because home builders have abandoned Houston in favor of greener pastures.

I'm not trying to offend here, it just comes naturally for me so don't take any of the following personally. I wrote that sentence because Baseball didn't like my comments about the Houston/Texas area sliding into a regional recession a couple of years ago (it was nothing personal on my part and I understood both Baseball's and your responses on this matter). I made that comment based on various reports I read and the region's dependence on energy prices. To date, Houston's admirably walked a tight line between technically sliding into recession (two consecutive quarters of negative growth) and economic growth.

Here's an economic report from the University of Houston's Bauer School of Business (a much better source of economic information than me): Resilience in the Face of a No-Growth Scenario

Houston has been diversifying their economy which will help. Energy prices probably won't help - I expect WTI to slide into the $30s after the summer driving season which will be no Bueno for TX frackers.

A big advantage for the future that IAH has is that, unlike LAX, SFO, ORD, and EWR, it appears (to me) that they've got room to increase daily departures. Those other bases are pretty much maxed out and don't really have room for much further growth.

I understand why you and most IAH based pilots are upset. But the airline is still growing block hours... +5.8% mainline ASMs YTD through the end of May (we continue to shrink regional flying). http://newsroom.united.com/2017-06-0...al-Performance
Houston's economy just sucks right now and the company's continuing to shift planes and people to optimize the company. +5.8% ASMs is pretty decent growth.