Originally Posted by iaflyer

DTW I feel has a long future - Of course, you never know, Delta has closed more bases than it's opened in the last 20 years. But, Detroit is still a large metropolis, the headquarters of Ford, GM and Chrysler, which have large operations throughout the world - requiring plenty of air travel. Other car companies also have operations here in design or research, Toyota for one is big, just because there are lots of 2nd tier auto suppliers in the area.

As for the airport traffic, the numbers are down lately because a lot of Delta's China operations went through DTW - but those was cut during COVID. But, with the end of COVID testing for inbound Chinese visitors, a lot of that flying is back on the schedule. DTW CPO recently has been asking 330/350 pilots to make sure their Chinese visas are good.

Right now, DTW is the third largest base after ATL and NYC (out of 7) so it's much larger base than CLE or CVG ever were. PIT was big for US Air, but I suspect Pittsburgh didn't have the large corporate customers that DTW has. Also, the Detroit Metropolitan area is about 50% larger than Pittsburgh.

DTW has few ATC delays other than when there is a snowstorm or thunderstorm close to the airport.