Originally Posted by
khergan
Maybe this is my ignorance or misunderstanding of the ORD gate distribution, but this seems to me like something that will accelerate. It seems like that if more usage = more gates, then losing gates will create less usage, which means AA will lose more gates, which will result in less usage, etc.
Could this become a snowball effect? Maybe I'm just misreading their methodology.
They can't be that dumb, even in that city. Pretty soon no airlines would have any gates.
It's going to come down to actual utilization of the gates you do have, possibly/likely modified for whatever their market goals are, such as regional feed, more Europe, more west coast, whatever they think benefits the city's economy. Of possibly just whatever brings in the most direct revenue to the airport authority... if they're not properly managed by the local political leaders, airports will naturally drift to prioritize the benefit of the organization itself, vice the city or citizens.