Prior to the pandemic, American Airlines was growing its Charlotte hub to 700 flights. They got new gates and were doubling down on their Southeastern hub, with its low costs and access to Sun destinations. Charlotte was still second to Dallas – Fort Worth, where they were growing to 900 flights.
American’s future in Charlotte may be about to get even bigger, since the airport has started work on a new 10,000 foot, $1.6 billion runway west of the terminal. And the airline’s Chief Operating Officer says that, given the 25% increase in airport capacity that this runway will bring, his carrier could approach 800 daily departures from the city.
American currently operates nine banks, or groupings of flights within a one-hour period, in Charlotte. The banks enable quick connections. Currently, in each bank, American operates about 70 arrivals and 70 departures. With the new runway, the numbers could increase by 20 arrivals and 20 departures in 2028. That could bring American close to 800 daily departures, up from 600 today.
Flying @AmericanAir in Charlotte pic.twitter.com/JSXyxLZpv1
— Bryan Shaw❌ (@WxShaw) June 13, 2023
While the airport is engaged in planning for several improvements the real constraint on Charlotte isn’t just runway capacity. It’s the concourses.
On peak days at peak times you simply cannot move through the terminal. People are packed body to body in low ceiling spaces at it is. Simply increasing the number of flights – and passengers – by more than 25% will be a miserable experience, even with capital improvements to the terminal.
Any self-respecting person takes one trip through AA’s hub in CLT and then forever commits to using Delta’s hub in Atlanta in markets where the two hubs are the only choice.
I live in Charlotte and fly weekly and this is why I fly United and Spirit. The side of the airport that is everyone but AA is nice and open with plenty of seating, lots of natural light, a priority pass lounge that you have a reasonable chance of getting into, and a couple restaurants you can order on app and pick up right before boarding.
Tim, No one is surprised that you choose Delta.
CLT’s exponential growth numbers suggest you’re in the minority. Personally, having flown through both many many times, CLT is no Singapore for transit ability, but I’ll take it over the Atlanta double-wides they call an airport any day. If I wanted to go to a fine dining experience called “Varsity” and call it amazing, it certainly wouldn’t be in Atlanta…
And, per using facts, AA’s market share throughout the SE has grown for a decade year on year at the expense of Delta so people are actively choosing CLT & DFW over the Atlanta trailer park daily…
MaxPower
I believe within the next few years Delta could be a takeover target for either American or United. Delta is falling apart at the seams.
@Jedi
I don’t believe that. I don’t enjoy transiting via ATL but I also don’t enjoy overly broad dogmatic statements, like Tim. Delta does plenty of things very well and makes a profit for their owners, but there’s no reason to pretend who Delta is and isn’t. They cut corners like every other airline but they care a lot more about marketing to cover where they cut costs.
@Jedi,
No way will two of the top 3 competitors be allowed to merge.
(Cue antitrust expert Tim Dunn chiming in…)
My home airport is a hub to no one and if I had to choose ATL or CLT, I’ll deal with Delta any day of the week. I’ve taken longer connections to avoid CLT.
CLT is a cesspool. Even the Delta counter there is a disaster as they have to put checked bags on trolleys to take them to the drop off point. The ACs have lines through the terminal and the PP lounge always has a line also.
CLT is the seventh circle of hell. AA concourses are obscenely overcrowded during flight banks. E-concourse is a toilet and AA apparently thinks that I want to walk outside in the pouring rain to board an RJ. ACs are beyond underwhelming. The AMEX lounge feel like a homeless encampment.
I avoid CLT whenever humanly possible. The thought of cramming even more flights and more people into a woefully overcrowded airport is another example of how AA could care less about the passenger experience.
Imagine avoiding an airport because other people are using it.
@Joe – You hint toward actually a good point. CLT with the massive throughput actually has very low airport costs. CLT has traditionally had a reputation for fortress hub high fares but honestly, I’ve yet to pay anything lately that seems outrageous. I’m looking at sub-$100 regular economy (not even Basic) fares on AA and UA to ORD or EWR, you can fly to most big cities in Florida for sub-$50 each way, even LAX/SFO usually in the $200-300 range.
But they got Bojangles at B9
There’s a reason I’ve been using DCA as my connection point over CLT as much as possible. Sure, being on A319s is not ideal from an upgrade perspective, but CLT is just awful based on how many people are there.
And no, I won’t choose to connect in ATL. SkyPesos are such an awful program compared to AA that I’d rather risk sitting in coach on an A319 over DCA than deal with SkyPesos. I can easily deal with MCE going up and down the East Coast. I actually had dinner and drinks with some DL sales people last month and told them I chose American as my airline over the company I used to work for (DL). I told them that their FFP was so bad that it was the deciding factor against them.
Note to self: Avoid CLT at all cost…
I appreciate the natural light at CLT but finding food or even a place to sit is a nightmare. I avoid it.
@Joe experience has taught some of us that overcrowded and congested airports are not conducive to smooth travel and remaining productive while on the road. CLT has become a total sh@tshow. If was handed 7,500 miles every time I had to haul a@@ from a remote E-gate to a distant A or B gate because AA finds it entertaining to delay my flights and leave me with impossible connection times I would fly myself and my partner to Europe in the front of the bus. It’s not about how bust CLT is, it’s AA’s operations in CLT are a hot mess and pale in comparison to what DL does in ATL or UA does in DEN.
Folks are welcome to misconnect in CLT to your heart’s content. CLT will continue to rank up there with EWR, LGA and JFK and connecting hubs of last resort for me.
every single person that has commented KNOWS like the author that CLT is incapable of supporting the level of growth that AA is throwing at CLT – but let’s be clear that this growth is almost entirely built on connecting more and more passengers through CLT. Connecting passengers that buy based on price do not know about the limitations of hub facilities or are willing to put up w/ the warts of a hub. CLT works financially for AA but that doesn’t change that it is a customer service success.
However, MAX goes off when I point out that there is a legitimate alternative of a hub – the largest in the world – that, while not spacious, does not involve crowding passengers and has adequate bathrooms, hallways, and the rest of the infrastructure that a global hub needs.
Delta has spent 50 years building the world’s largest hub at ATL and it works. it doesn’t have the space per passenger that DL has at DTW but it is well-connected to the world and is a massive facility at which DL operates from every concourse.
AA, OTOH, has been unable to develop a coherent long-term successful network strategy so has facilities like ORD that are vastly underused while others like CLT are pushed beyond the limits.
And the local customers do choose other airlines rather than put up w/ the goat rodeo that is AA at CLT.
Ah, yes. American Airlines. 20 years ago promised to make more flights comfortable by taking out rows of seats and giving us more legroom. for a start. This was after 9/11 when people were not flying like we did. All airlines were trying to recover. I don’t remember exactly when that ploy went away. But they replaced it with adding those seats back in and if we want acceptable legroom, we can pay extra.
They call it premium economy. And it’s probably the same amount of legroom that airlines had before 9/11. I flew into Charlotte for a connection back to Portland. Three planes arrived about the same time two of them were international, and that is where the bottleneck started. Not enough immigration officers or space for the serpentine lines waiting to get through immigration. It took hours. By the time I got through all of the restaurants or food, sources were closed. The AA flight didn’t serve meals on flights after
7:30PM. 5 hours to Oregon.
Charlotte is as bad as these people say.
@Tim_Dunn “Goat rodeo” LMAO! I am trying to visualize that and it does seem to describe CLT nicely.
You are sot on about AA and their strategy / lack thereof. AA likes CLT because its passenger fees are as low as they are. You can expect that AA will resist any efforts to modernize and right-size the facility if it means they have to pay a single red cent. Similar to how they are expanding at DFW with solutions that will further congest A and C.
Meanwhile, ATL is widening the D concourse to accommodate the increased passenger counts from DL up-gauging the aircraft they are flying out of D and to give the Spirit passengers enough room for their gate-side MMA events.
I have just connected through CLT last week. It was a Friday mid-afternoon. The concourses are skin tight and good luck finding a seat at any of the (limited) dining options. It is an outdated facility in need of an LGA-style overhaul. ATL gets complaints too – but it works and generally has something for everyone. Some folks like the charm of the rocking chairs – but there are maybe 30(?) of these total – possibly more. Anyway – it just seems to be stuck in 90’s airport mode.
CLT was never designed to be a high capacity hub. Ill do the 2 hour drive there to get cheaper fares but its not my first choice – ATL is so efficient
While I agree on the crowding, I actually like Charlotte better due to avoiding the up-and-down and Skytrain moves at Atlanta that make a short trip feel longer. But if anybody responsible for the concourses at Charlotte is reading this, I’d like to suggest a concept from a career of managing these spaces (NYC rail stations): a tight corridor works better when you move the stationary people out of the way of moving people. That means people who are simply waiting for their plane, or queueing for an agent’s attention, or queueing to board, need to be turned sideways so the queues are parallel to and off to the side of the corridor, not perpindicular to the corridor as is common at most USA airports. In European and Asian airports, parallel queueing is more common, usually with a glass partition or fence protecting the space for moving people and corraling waiting passengers into the parallel queueing. This works because stationary people need less space than moving people. Moving people need about 20 square feet per person. Stationary people need 10 square feet. Neither standard is pleasant, but if you crowd in the stationary people, the space still functions. If you crowd in the moving people, the corridor will come to a halt.
@David S:
If you go over to A concourse at CLT, and the new part of A (everybody but American), plenty of rocking chairs, wide open concourses, lots of empty space, the new A has a second level mezzanine with a future concession but relatively unused restrooms and open areas with chairs/tables overlooking the gates. A shame it’s like a mile to walk there….
In May, I arrived in CLT around 7:45 am on a SUNDAY morning and the Admirals’ Club had maybe 3 empty seats in it!
CLT is worse than some 3rd world airports…it’s impossible to move, AA schedules tight connections, terminal E is a joke. It has moving walkways that don’t move (always broken). Corridors are too small. End gates are too close together and not big enough for the higher capacity planes they are using. If I have to get to the east coast, I take AA to PHL or DCA. If going west I will go to DFW.
Worse yet, the AA lounges in CLT are already overwhelmed and there is no hope in sight that anything will get any better as CLT offers AA the lowest landing fees of all the Airports AA has a hub.
CLT was a great connecting hub years ago for then PI and later US – who primarily operated 737s, the occasional 757 and few 767s.
The terminal was pleasant and manageable.
Now it’s a disaster with the ridiculously short connecting times, pax running down a jam packed concourse.
The airport needs a serious upgrade that is going to be painful – A & B need to be demolished and rebuilt per 21th century standards.
American didn’t build the CLT airport the city of City did.
Same situation at Palm Springs airport. Terminal was built for 40 to 60 PAX per flight when regional jets and turbo props ruled the flight schedule. Now, B737 and A321 are on the tarmac at 140 PAX per flight. Passengers are sitting on each others laps or on the floor waiting for departures. What a mash up!!
CLT is the DTW of the 90s
Speaking of underutilized…looking at you DL at DTW these days
Dulles is the southeast connection facility of choice for savvy fliers. UNITED is rising.
More vapor ware from Delta at ATL with its Greyhound hub.
I am a CLT captive. The convenience of being able to fly pretty much anywhere is wonderful. But the B and C concourse’s are a joke, where D and E are marginally better. A is also not great, apart from tne “new A” (the extension where non AA fly from). Connecting from E to B or A? Prepare for a long walk through dense packs of people.
I agree with one of the other commenters: B and C need demolishing and rebuilding – and that is going to be super expensive. They ARE upgrading the check in and baggage collection areas, which was very necessary. But B and C remain HUGE pain points that need attention, and I have not heard any plans to that effect.
One other bad planning observation: the rail connection that the City of Charlotte is dreaming up to connect the city, the burbs and the airport will not come for another 15 to 30 years, if ever. The state legislature (red) is not in the mood to co-pay the City’s (blue) ambitions. But the real joke is, that per the current plans (dreams) the light rail will run a good distance away from the airport, and there is a shuttle service projected to connect terminal to rail. Anyone who has battled the CLT access roads knows what a wonderful idea this is!
I have no reason to think that the US Government would prevent a merger of Delta with either United or American. Antitrust enforcement appears to be a thing of the past, making duopoly the natural state of business in the USA.