Delta Air Lines’ largest hub in Atlanta and its smallest hub in Cincinnati tell two different stories of the turbulent economy.
At Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, Delta has been cutting back on some of its overseas flying, but it has still maintained a critical mass of about 1,000 daily departures and nearly 70 nonstop international routes.
Cincinnati, where Delta once had more than 600 daily departures, has now shrunk to the carrier’s smallest hub with roughly 130 flights a day. Delta used to operate its hundreds of flights out of three concourses at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. It has since pulled out of two of them and uses just one concourse. The airport is now studying whether to demolish one of the abandoned concourses along with two aging terminals.
In one of the old Cincinnati terminals, a baggage carousel sits quietly in the dark, unused. The people-mover train whisks by an empty concourse without stopping.
The cutbacks have hurt frequent travelers and the business community in the Cincinnati area.
“It’s horrible,” said John Robbins, who lives in the greater Cincinnati area and flies a couple of times a week for his job as a field service engineer. “It’s hurt a lot of people.”
The reasons for the wildly different outcomes in Atlanta versus Cincinnati are many, Delta says. Among them are the strong local demand for air travel by large global businesses such as Coca-Cola, the efficient design of Hartsfield-Jackson, the relationship between Delta and the city and the advantageous geographical location of Atlanta as a connecting hub.
Atlanta’s location makes it a great place for the airline to connect travelers from the East Coast and Midwest on their way to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, said Delta spokesman Trebor Banstetter. That has allowed Delta to build Atlanta into its No. 1 international gateway and the world’s largest airline hub.
To be sure, Atlanta isn’t immune from the cutbacks that Delta and other airlines have been making. Delta last week announced it will discontinue several international routes from Atlanta, including flights to Shanghai and seasonal flights to Athens, Greece; Copenhagen; Denmark; Moscow; Prague; and Tel Aviv, Israel.
But in these tough times, “Airlines basically circle the wagons around their strongest hubs,” said Port Washington, N.Y.-based airline consultant Bob Mann. So for Delta, Atlanta and a few other strong hubs “end up being the cities around which they circle their wagons. Those are the very durable hubs.”
Delta’s 2008 acquisition of Northwest Airlines also gave it a total of seven U.S. hubs. Now, rather than connecting travelers through weaker hubs like Cincinnati or Memphis, an old Northwest hub, Delta is consolidating connections through the strongest: Atlanta, New York, Detroit, Minneapolis and Salt Lake City.
Robbins said all of his customers used to be a direct flight away from Cincinnati.
Now he has to connect at another Delta hub, and getting to his destination “becomes an all-day event,” he said. Instead of seeing two or three customers a week like he used to, he can often only see one.
Even for leisure travelers in the Cincinnati area, the effects are noticeable.
“You used to be able to fly anywhere, anytime you want to,” said Ken Piper, who lives near Cincinnati. “That’s no longer the case.”
Cincinnati officials are adjusting to a new reality.
The Cincinnati concourse that could be demolished, Concourse C, was built in 1994 at a heady time for the airport. It was part of a $500 million expansion when Cincinnati had been designated Delta’s No. 2 hub and the airport expanded to more than 100 gates.
That airport “was built for a different time and a different expectation,” Mann said. “There has been a course correction ... That’s the risk you take with a very long gestation period” for airport development.
Now, the airport doesn’t have nearly enough flights to fill all those gates and has lost all but one of its overseas flights amid Delta’s cutbacks. Cincinnati airport officials are partnering with local chambers to figure out how to attract international flights to London or Frankfurt.
“We are doing things that we haven’t had to do in decades,” said Meghan Glynn, vice president of external affairs for the airport. “It’s a very entrepreneurial situation.”
Meanwhile, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is preparing to open a new international terminal next year to prepare for expected growth in international flying by Delta — even though Delta has had to pull back on its international growth plans amid high fuel prices and the uncertain economy.
Airport officials are confident Delta “will continue to grow in the future,” Hartsfield-Jackson general manager Louis Miller said.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said the Atlanta hub’s resilience is “symbolic of the strong partnership we’ve developed” with Delta and its chief executive, Richard Anderson. The airport and the thousands of flights a day it hosts are “essential to the region, the state and the Southeast,” Reed said.
Delta’s move to focus on Atlanta and a few other strong hubs helps to make it “as durable as possible and to minimize the possibility that any event could impact Atlanta service,” Mann said.
But Cincinnati officials have learned that the world changes rapidly, according to Steve Stevens, president of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.
Though Cincinnati once had more flights than it needed, “I don’t think anybody can think they have a lock on it,” Stevens said. “There’s always a factor that you don’t realize or understand. And you know, in this day and age of mergers and acquisitions, those things happen fairly quickly.”
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Delta’s U.S. hub cities
Daily departures | All destinations | International destinations
• Atlanta | 975 | 209 | 64
• Detroit | 529 | 132 | 18
• Minneapolis-St. Paul | 440 | 130 | 14
• Salt Lake City | 257 | 84 | 6
• Memphis | 172 65 | 1
• New York (JFK | 154 | 73 | 30
• Cincinnati | 130 | 50 | 2
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