Just the highlights:

• Delta Air Line’s is further reducing what’s left of their hub in Memphis, cutting 25 of their current 150 flights by early September but only dropping one destination (Ft. Smith, AR). No word yet if any of the airline’s three current CLT-MEM flights will be eliminated, but losing a flight would not be a surprise.

The recent history of radically downsized hubs is not encouraging (see: American Airlines in St. Louis and US Airways in Pittsburgh). Basically, it’s a very slippery slope down to just being a big spoke with ~50 flights day. So the odds of Delta service to Memphis or Cincinnati — another dying hub that’s down to 125 flights a day this summer, including three to CLT — being around much longer are not good.

In a related note, Delta will have 36 flights a day from Charlotte come July 11 (11 x Atlanta, 3 x Cincinnati, 6 x Detroit, 3 x Memphis, 4 x Minneapolis, 6 x New York City LaGuardia, 2 x New York City JFK, 1 x Salt Lake City). This very likely represents the high water mark for the airline at CLT. There’s nothing more they can add really.

• Copa Airlines, Avianca, and TACA Airlines have officially joined the Star Alliance, the airline grouping US Airways is currently in. As we’ve said before, this could be helpful in US Airways’ attempts to add service to Central and South America from CLT, which is its primary hub to the region. Avianca being in Star especially helps with possible service to Bogota, Colombia, which is one of the more obvious places US Airways could possibly add from Charlotte.

None of this matter if US Airways merges with American Airlines as a). the combined carrier would likely be OneWorld, not Star and b). there’s absolutely no need to fly to someplace like Bogota when you’ve got a hub in Miami, as American does. US Airways is unlikely to add flights to someplace like Bogota until it’s clear that a merger with American isn’t going to happen. That is if they add flights to Bogota (or Panama City, Panama) at all, which is far from a given.

• Speaking of the Star Alliance, Lufthansa continues to do very well in Charlotte. They’re planning to their Charlotte-Munich flight daily this year until December 27, then go five flights a week until January 16, when it goes to six flights a week through February 5, and then back to daily again. This is a smaller winter reduction than in previous years.