Weakest hub? WFAYTA? If you can find the Crew News with Parker in NYC from few months ago....watch it and educate yourself. PHX is a what he called a level 2 (paraphrasing) base. It’s very important to the system since it takes the pressure off of Lax (which he called a level 3 because of lack of growth capabilities). It also is a clean up city when the system hits the fan. Look at the open time on the 320, a lot of it is covered by PHX pilots that deadhead out or back to clean up the crap the East and Midwest leave in their wake from weather and delays.

As I recall, he said level 1:

-CLT (money maker and more growth, most important domestic city)

-DCA (biggest money maker cause of our size and presence their)

DFW (Growth and well it’s ****ing our biggest hub, HQ, and carries a huge international presence in all regions.)

Level 2

PHX (as said above)

PHL (European launch city)

LAX (Asia)

Level 3

MIA (currently weak cause of SA market but still important when that comes around)

ORD (domestic blood bath (my words) and limited internationally cause of competition, and PHL and DFW taking the majority of the load)

LGA (JFK basically a shell of what it was and no plans to every bring it back internationally, and LGA fawning over Delta). In my opinion. AA gave up on NYC a long time ago and left it Delta, they don’t want to try and get in a battle with them to try and compete.

I live in AZ, but commute to another base cause of the aircraft I fly. This is not about home team crap. It’s about logistics, not feelings. To be blunt, a lot of salty easties said PHX would die as soon as the merger is done....yet CLT has lost more flying to the LAA 737, AND, PHX just added more flying to include 777 to London. Just sayin