Why hub? When you hub you need more gates because everything is there at the same time. When you have more gates, you need more equipment. When all of those gates are occupied with your airplanes, you have to have employees to staff every gate. Then, after all those planes head out those employees are sitting idle until the next push. When something bad happens at the hub and delays occur, it screws up your airline up system wide, which adds expenses.

I really think this is what makes Southwest work. Sure, the fuel hedging, single aircraft type, and other factors contribute but this was there before the fuel savings. Other airlines have also gone to "rolling hub" concepts to try and increase utilization and minimize ground time and it has worked for them too.

If all else fails, go for STL. I'm looking at an empty D concourse and the biggest thing sitting on C is a 757. The new runway is spiffy too. We now have the capability of using both parallells in bad weather which will really be a big boost.