Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Atlanta lucked out, aviation wise, period. As did Charlotte.
ATL having the worlds largest airline hub and Charlotte having I believe the 3rd largest airline hub ( AA @ DWF is #2 I believe) in the world is almost entirely about being in the right place.
ATL and CLT have incredibly low "O&D" (Origin and Destination. Basically a person who starts or finishes their trip at either ATL or CLT. -- NOT those connecting from say Richmond to Tampa via ATL/CLT). Atlanta is a much larger MSA than CLT so it is proportionally bigger than CLT due to more local traffic at ATL.
They are both in the middle of one of the most busiest aviation corridors in the world + plus the traffic is within a single country + lack of adequate rail transportation between this corridor).
Of course ATL and Georgia had to take advantage of the opportunity to make it into the worlds busiest airport. : ) Just like Virginia took advantage of it's proximity to DC to create such a wealthy and prosperous suburbs.
This thread isn't about Charlotte at all so I'm not sure why you brought it up. It has a different aviation history than Atlanta...that's another subject for another time.
At any rate, we're not talking about features of geography that essentially necessitate a city arising in a particular place as being "lucky" (which is the case with Atlanta) as that would mean practically all cities that were somewhat sizable before the mid-20th century were lucky. The term loses meaning when applied so broadly. Within this context, Atlanta isn't really "lucky" especially when you consider all the work that went into developing Atlanta's airport. Mayor William Hartsfield was quite the visionary of his day.
Obviously DC's location is much more political in nature and various locations were floated for a new national capital.
Within this context, Atlanta isn't really "lucky" especially when you consider all the work that went into developing Atlanta's airport. Mayor William Hartsfield was quite the visionary of his day.
Thanks for acknowledging Hartsfield, Mutiny77. He was a true visionary, and not just in regards to the Airport.
I found the 2018 O&D figures on the DOT's site, I'll post the link tomorrow. This is last years top 10:
LAX
Chicago O'Hare
Denver
Atlanta
San Francisco
Boston
Seattle/Tacoma
Newark
Dallas/Ft. Worth
Orlando
Obviously DC's location is much more political in nature and various locations were floated for a new national capital.
The whole luck thing is a little funny considering we don't know if Virginia wouldve been better off or not had DC gone somewhere else. Alexandria or Richmond could've become much bigger players in their own right... we don't know. VA benefits/doesnt benefit by having some suburbs of a city not within it's own state lines. It doesn't get to take all of the benefits of DC, the core city itself into it's own state metrics. It doesnt get to make decisions for the city and its surrounding areas as a unified state. If anything GA Is the beneficiary here compared to VA because all of Atlanta is within state lines, and it's also benefitted by its low cost of living and attracting tons of folks to move there for precisely that the last couple of decades. Theres no luck here but rather just circumstances.
Virginia is putting their actions and money where their mouth is with regards to both diversifying it's economy, and increasing innovation.
The Virginia Tech Innovation campus for Alexandria
If Virginia was truly innovative, I'd still live there. Yes, you can throw the word "innovation" onto any building you want. I remember in the late 90s the Center for Innovative Technology in Herndon, and its funky roof, was a big deal. But half of the successful ideas I hear about here in California would be dismissed as "crazy" in Virginia. Innovation = intelligence + insanity. NoVA had a massive telecom industry, AOL, etc, which could have been the home of Software-as-a-Service. Instead, that morphed into the massive data centers in Ashburn, mostly leased by West Coast tech companies with few employees inside.
One thing I never see in California that I see in offices in NoVa is the golf shirts tucked into Khakis look. Why must half of Tyson's office workers look like Best Buy salesman? From the 90s?
Also, no one in California has ever told me to cover my ass. If something eff's up, you get another job. In Virginia, I heard "cover your ass" just about everyday at work.
"Innovation" in NoVA means doing something on a gov't contract with Mitre, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, etc. I would love to see the DC area catch back up to metro Boston and metro NY for venture funding, but it really needs to lose the gov't contractor corporate culture, and that will require a lot more than another building with an innovation stamp or the Amazon HQ.
Atlanta is boring in comparison to Austin and Nashville for a white or Asian 25 year old, but it’s far from boring in actuality. In fact, once you get beyond your bar crawling stage in life, you learn that almost every major city is the same.
I'm a lot more than 25, and my wife even lets me go to strip clubs when I'm Atlanta. Besides those fine establishments, it's remarkably boring. The only thing that makes my eyelids close faster than Atlanta is Charlotte.
Around 80% of people flying to Atlanta are simply connecting. I imagine the # is even higher on Delta alone and excluding Southwest and the rest.
Charlotte too is around 80% connecting passengers.
I recently had a period of temporary insanity and booked a flight from LAX instead of Burbank. Atlanta and Charlotte do not want LAX's O&D. Whatever people think of traffic on the 405, they haven't experienced the joy of sitting on the LAX traffic loop while rebooking the flight you just missed...when you have Clear, PreCheck, and were "smart" and came in on the arrivals level.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
