As promised, an analysis US Airways’ growth possibilities in the south and southeast.

Charlotte is US Airways’ main hub for serving secondary markets in the southeastern and southern U.S. Most of the new domestic destinations that the airline has introduced from CLT in recent years are also to the region. Since 2008, the airline has added daily, year-round flights from Charlotte:

  • Daytona Beach, FL effective Feb. 1, 2008
  • Forth Walton Beach, FL effective April 6, 2008
  • Panama City, FL effective April 6, 2008 (dropped September 2008)
  • Gulfport, MS effective May 4, 2008
  • Austin, TX effective May 4, 2008
  • San Antonio, TX effective May 4, 2008
  • Tuscon, AZ effective June 2, 2008 (dropped December 2008)
  • Honolulu, HI effective Dec. 17, 2009
  • Melbourne, FL effective Feb. 11, 2010
  • Baton Rouge, LA, effective June 24, 2010

So a beach market plus a failure in Tuscon. And, yeah, lots of places from Florida to Texas but nothing new in the Midwest or Northeast.

Figuring out what’s possible in the SE from CLT is fairly simple. Delta Air Lines has a huge hub in Atlanta. Let’s compare the number of seats offered on DL to ATL with US to CLT to secondary markets in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and eastern Texas. The numbers are for Thursday, June 24, 2010:

City Code ATL CLT
Huntsville, AL HSV 702 290
Sarasota, FL SRQ 638 242
Tallahassee, FL TLH 618 280
Ft. Walton Beach, FL VPS 600 260
Panama City, FL ECP 584
Jackson, MS JAN 582 200
Mobile, AL MOB 540 150
Gulfport, MS GPT 534 190
Daytona Beach, FL DAB 494 210
Melbourne, FL MLB 422 150
Baton Rouge, LA BTR 420 150
Montgomery, AL MGM 400 150
Gainesville, FL GNV 350 200
Shreveport, LA SHR 250
Alexandria, LA AEX 150
Lafayette, LA LFT 150
Monroe, LA MLU 150
Killeen, TX GRK 100
Meridan, MS MEI 100
Columbus, MS GTR 84
Muscle Shoals, AL MSL 68
Tupelo, MS TUP 34

The critical points I take from this:

  1. US Airways gets about 35 to 40 percent of the traffic flow over CLT that Delta does over ATL for these sorts of markets.
  2. The minimum buy-in for service to CLT is 150 seats a day. That’s three 50-seat regional jet flights a day.
  3. To do the math, if Delta offers above about 375 seats to a SE destination from Atlanta, there’s a good chance the market will work from Charlotte.

And what else could US Airways add in the future? The options are pretty limited. There’s always Panama City, but that flopped two years ago. Shreveport is a significantly smaller market than Baton Rouge. It’s also 80 miles further away. And beyond that, nothing is even remotely plausible.

So if US Airways is going to add markets domestically from Charlotte, it’s going to have to change what it’s been doing. There’s pretty much nothing left for it to add in the southeast. There are some places in the Northeast and, especially, Midwest, that could work, but the airline has so far avoided adding flights to those sorts of markets from CLT.