Originally Posted by
Baradium
If those people wanted to go on their trips, they would still do it. It's not like they are going to say "it's another 30 minutes or hour away, so I won't take this 16 hour trip now."
The only reason some cities have service at all is because the airlines don't want one of the others to have the convenience of the only closer airport. For many of those RJs are just more flights per day vs a larger aircraft that could serve them instead. It's a convenience, not a necessity.
A recent rest of this theory has been run using the 787 and A380. Convenience won. Outside of a centrally planned economy, you aren't going to get a "logical" air transport network.
And I would also dispute the "well it's only another 30 minutes"
Yes GSP-CLT and AVL-CLT is silly. But I live somewhere that has daily RJ service to 4 hubs all of which are 6 hour drives away. They are the closest international gateways. Lots of americans live within a 2 hour drive of a major airport. The percentage that live within a 2 hour drive of LHR direct (let alone CDG or NRT) is much lower.
And there are people for whom another hour makes a difference ... the high value business travelers who prop up the whole enterprise.