Delta ends some routes at Tokyo's Narita airport, signalling start of shift in Asia

Quote: Pacomartin

I always amazed that Atlanta ended up the largest airport in the world.

Delta grew very large <shrug>.

I recall in the 70s it was a well known fact the airport with the most traffic was O'Hare. No idea whether it was true.


Did any major airline make JFK a hub before Jet Blue?

Quote: Nareed

I recall in the 70s it was a well known fact the airport with the most traffic was O'Hare. No idea whether it was true.

Certainly it was true. They were very proud of that. Before O'Hare was built it was Midway. O'Hare was the nation's busiest until about 1996.

Over the last 20 years the biggest change was that airports in Cincinnati OH ; Pittsburgh PA ; and St. Louis MO were no longer among the largest airports.
All of these airports were near the population center of the USA. But that become unimportant when the range of even the smallest jets became much longer. The geographic center of Continental USA is closest to Omaha airport, but it is not as important as population center.

Formerly iconic St. Louis Airport


Chicago Midway made a comeback when Southwest started flying there, Washington Dulles came off the federal subsidies to become a major airport, and Fort Lauderdale grew up to rival Miami airport.

Quote: Nareed

Did any major airline make JFK a hub before Jet Blue?

Both American and Delta consider 10 domestic airports to be hubs, of which they share three: JFK, LGA and LAX. But American's primary hub is DFW and Delta's primary hub is ATL, so I believe JetBlue was the first airline to consider JFK their primary hub. PanAm also thought of JFK as a hub before they ceased operations in 1991.

Quote: Pacomartin

Certainly it was true.

That might just be the one true aviation fact from my childhood :)

Quote:

PanAm also thought of JFK as a hub before they ceased operations in 1991.

Pan Am was the strangest airline. I should research this more, but I gather it didn't fly domestically within the US for some legal reason, except for connections. On the other hand it flew to every continent on Earth and to an awful lot of countries. IN the 1980s it merged with National Airlines just to acquire a domestic network.

BTW, I flew on National as the merger was going on. Technically they were Pan Am already, but the code and livery I got were National. The flight was IAH to Tampa Bay. Back then my parents claimed there was no airport in Orlando <roll-eyes>

Another of Pan Am's oddities, is that it seems to have flown just about every jet made by Boeing, and every wide body ever made in the US. I didn't know this then, but recently browsing pictures of Pan Am planes, I came across DC-10s and L-1011s. It seems odd for the launch customer of the 747, especially considering Juan Trip allegedly had a say in its design.

Last time I flew with them, in 1990 shortly before they folded, I got an A320...

Quote: Nareed

Pan Am was the strangest airline. I should research this more, but I gather it didn't fly domestically within the US for some legal reason, except for connections.

Pan American remained operating only overseas flights until 1979 (deregulation and merge with National Airlines).

PanAm had a round the world flight "Clipper 1" and "Clipper 2" which were from New York to San Francisco - The flights arrived say in JFK (or SFO), and continued to SFO (or JFK) but could NOT take passengers ticketed for the domestic sector .

1960 route map

A new railway line is planned to link both airports through an expansion of Tokyo Station, cutting travel time from

Tokyo Station to Haneda from 30 minutes to 18 minutes, and from
Tokyo Station to Narita from 55 minutes to 36 minutes;

the line would cost 400 billion yen and would be funded primarily by private investors. This new line should be completed by the 2020 Olympics.

Quote: Pacomartin

A new railway line is planned to link both airports through an expansion of Tokyo Station, cutting travel time from

Tokyo Station to Haneda from 30 minutes to 18 minutes, and from
Tokyo Station to Narita from 55 minutes to 36 minutes;

the line would cost 400 billion yen and would be funded primarily by private investors. This new line should be completed by the 2020 Olympics.

The expected bump in Olympic visitor traffic makes Delta's pullback seem odd. Do they know something that we don't?

I thought pan am was prohibited by law from operating domestic routes. Turns out they were prohibited by government regulators.

From Wikipedia: As rival airlines convinced Congress that Pan Am would use its political clout to monopolize all U.S. air routes, the CAB repeatedly denied the airline permission to operate within the U.S., either as a result of organic growth or a merger with another airline. As a consequence, Pan Am remained an American carrier operating international routes only (aside from Hawaii and Alaska).


By the time deregulation came, it was too late as they were in bad financial shape.