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United needs/wants a SE hub to push into LATAM and hit American. They do 7% market share at FLL and Spirit does 32%. Total almost 40%. JetBlue does 20% for which they already have started codesharing with and just today released the ability to book on each others website via miles etc.
Something to think about.
As far as airline management pov: Delta + LATAM JV + AM JV + ownership stakes (airline ecosystem) are much larger than UA & AA (no revenue sharing) combined in Latin/South America.
American is second followed by United. United is missing a hub in the most populous portion of the U.S. B6 is a competitor. For every UA pax that choose B6 over UA that is money lost by United: not a solution. There are no cities with enough O&D that aren’t overshadowed by ATL , MIA, and CLT in the SE. they would love a SE hub, especially since IAH is 20M pax behind CLT and 15M behind MIA annually.
IAH cannot be a DFW, ATL, CLT, or MIA. Despite its O&D its geography is awful for connections, is bled by nearby HOU, and lives in the shadow of DFW. American’s west coast gap could be solved by PDX or JV/merger ties with AS and Delta’s TX gap by AUS or some sort of JV/merger with WN.