Thank you HK
I appreciate you seeing my point. I’ll take it as a small victory since I doubt we’ve ever agreed on something.
Austin build-up is clearly focused around capturing the strong O&D growing in central TX and giving Delta exposure to the Texas economy. It won’t be an DFW or IAH sized hub, but it’s being developed to do what Delta needs out of Texas: capturing corporate business, young tech professionals, and high-disposable income families.
As our operation scales with the O&D, connections will grow too. In fact, we already sale connection flights through AUS such as, “SEA>AUS>MSY or LAX>AUS>JAX”. The RJ ops will be up-gauged with mainline and frequency increase given time to mature. Intra-TX will come eventually, but be last. MFE, MAF, and HRL were gate squats that have since been moved to more lucrative flying.
It’s no secret Delta has longed for a TX presence since losing DFW. Everything they have done in Austin up to this point indicates “hub building”. Delta burned money in developing NYC and LAX to become number one and from what I understand, organically built up SEA and BOS to be hubs.
As much as I wish Southwest would offer AUS up on a silver platter to Delta they will defend their incumbent position and ABIA will not play favorites. I believe, their growth in AUS is reactionary to Delta just as it was to AA growth. If they become hub and spoke I don’t see how they hub AUS, DAL, and HOU. We will find out January when ABIA publicizes the lease agreement who gets how many gates, future growth allocation, club allocation, and more. Definitely no base until new terminal unfortunately.