Or at least that’s what the press release says. Essentially, the airline confirmed what we already knew: it’s now a four-hub operation (CLT, PHL, PHX, DCA) with very little else. Las Vegas gets cut some more, down to 36 flights by late February, down from 64 currently. The crew bases in Las Vegas, Boston, and LaGuardia are closing next year as well.
Some other items of note:
• European flying is not going so great for US Airways. The airline isn’t flying five routes in the summer of 2010 that they flew this past summer: Philadelphia – Birmingham, U.K.; London Gatwick; Milan; Shannon, Ireland; and Stockholm. So as of now, looks like 22 flights a day on 21 routes next summer compared to 27 flights/26 routes in summer 2009.
• Phoenix continues to be an issue. The press release says they’re dropping two secondary markets, Wichita (which we already knew about) and Colorado Springs (which is new news). Not good when US Airways can’t make the secondary markets on which is they have no competition to Phoenix work. PHX is Southwest Airline’s third biggest operation, and thus US Airways faces intense competition from the country’s largest discount carrier on virtually all major routes out of PHX.
• Oh, and 1,000 job cuts. Some will likely be here in Charlotte.
• Exact flight level impacts at CLT remain uncertain; when they post a schedule reflecting their pending LGA/DCA slot swap with Delta, then we’ll have an idea what the baseline will be going forward.
