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Good read. Good to know that our "little" airport is constantly striving for improvement. Can Columbia Metro Airport ever become even a medium sized hub with Hartsfield and Charlotte's airport so closeby?
No, CAE will never be a hub. Airlines are shuttering hubs and the industry is consolidating. The best CAE could hope for would be for increased nonstop service to every remaining hub, kind of like Austin, Texas.
No, CAE will never be a hub. Airlines are shuttering hubs and the industry is consolidating. The best CAE could hope for would be for increased nonstop service to every remaining hub, kind of like Austin, Texas.
Austin is a small hub and has many more flights then most people think. Especially the service to London.
Austin is not a hub. You can be a major airport with lots of flights without being a hub. I've been to the Austin airport and it does have lots of flights, but no airline uses it as a hub.
Austin is not a hub. You can be a major airport with lots of flights without being a hub. I've been to the Austin airport and it does have lots of flights, but no airline uses it as a hub.
Actually, the FAA, confers a different meaning for a hub than airlines. Austin is considered a medium hub to the FAA, and at most a major airport with lounges.
Okay, but that's a stretch. By that measure Columbia is a small hub already. When someone says "will CAE ever become a hub?" in the context of proximity to CLT and ATL, it is not unreasonable to assume they mean 'hub' the way airlines mean 'hub.' To that end, no, Columbia will never be a hub. Perhaps one day it could be a medium hub by the technical definition of the link you provided, but it's never going to be a place where mainline flights route connecting passengers through a hub-and-spoke paradigm.
CAE should focus on getting its existing carriers to fly bigger planes on its routes and add hub cities from which the airport is not currently served. Minneapolis and Miami come to mind. It would be great if Denver, Salt Lake City or Phoenix were added. Bigger planes have the dual benefit of increasing the number of seats (ie, increasing supply and lowering prices) and also increasing the importance of flights into and out of CAE. When weather or other issues cause systemic delays, flights on small planes are cancelled first because there are fewer stranded passengers to deal with. Bigger planes get higher priority when slots open up. Although I love flying out of CAE for many reasons, I've been burned several times when my CAE flight gets cancelled and isn't rescheduled even when flights to other cities are resuming.
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