US Airways Boeing 737-4B7 (24980/1982) N453UW taxies at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL/KFLL) on January 13, 2011.
(Photo by Michael Carter)
On Wednesday I heard some chilling words.
American Airlines CFO Derek Kerr was speaking at an investor conference and he said “US Airways will basically go away in the October timeframe: the signs will come down.”
Two days earlier, Maya Leibman, American’s chief information officer, strongly implied during a conference call with reporters that US Airways will go away in October. Afterwards, Associated Press writer David Koenig wrote a story that began “After more than 75 years of flying, the end is near for US Airways.”
So it was no secret that US Airways is going away soon. But hearing Kerr say it and set a tentative date, that brought me up short.
Essentially, the end will come on the day workers change the signage at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, the heart of US Airways. Planes with US Airways colors will fly into 2016 and the full integration of work groups may not be completed until after that, but that’s all back burner stuff for most people.
Leading up to the signage change will be a reservations system transition. Leibman and Kerr both described a “drip down” process, meaning it will be gradual and take place over 90 days, during which US Airways flight codes will change to American codes. For passengers, that will be solely a computer event. It is scheduled to begin in July and end in October.
If precedent is any indication, the airline will try to do the bulk of the airport signage change work at Charlotte in one night, so that one day most of the signs in the ticketing lobby will say US Airways and the next day they will say American Airlines.
US Airways is important to me, just as it is for thousands of people, many but not all of them airline employees. In 1996, I moved to Charlotte to cover US Airways for The Charlotte Observer. For most of 2004, I was staff writer for US Airways. In 2005 I resumed life as a reporter, again focused on US Airways. In 2014, Dan Reed and I published a book about US Airways’ merger with American.
Charlotte Douglas has been US Airways’ heart for nearly two decades. Philadelphia International Airport and Washington Reagan National are also important, but they are shared with other airlines.
National was not even designated as a hub until 2013.
In the late 1970s, US Airways predecessor Piedmont Airlines began to connect passengers in Charlotte, which became its first hub. In 1987, Piedmont merged with USAir. Over the ensuing two decades, airport director Jerry Orr worked to maneuver Charlotte Douglas into a spot as the carrier’s primary hub, in place of Pittsburgh, which had been US Air’s primary hub. In a particularly graceless display of lack of gratitude, city officials fired Orr when he was 71.
But perhaps the most important event in airport history was the 2013 merger of American and US Airways. That made Charlotte the second biggest hub for the world’s largest airline. Also, it assured that US Airways would not merge with Delta, a stunt it attempted in 2006.
A merger would have vastly diminished Charlotte’s importance because the same airline would have operated both the Atlanta and Charlotte hubs, the only two hubs in the Southeast, home to 87 million people.
U.S. Justice Department regulators later said they would likely have sought to block it, but US Airways dropped the scheme before it got to the regulators. This does not mean, however, that someone would not have tried again someday.
The possibility is gone now. Charlotte can be an important world city for as long as commercial aviation uses a hub model.
A night in October will symbolize that accomplishment, even though for many a sense of loss will accompany it.
(Ted Reed - Forbes)
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