Being Chicago’s hometown airline — and shouting about it a lot — affords United Airlines certain privileges.
But to our minds, that does not include the right for the airline’s outspoken CEO to try and snow local media with his nonsense that those of us who fly out of Chicago and pay handsomely for the privilege will be best served by a virtual United monopoly at our all-important airport.
Kirby actually made the argument at a “Crain’s Power Breakfast” that Chicago would be better off with American Airlines mostly gone from O’Hare and with one hub carrier rather than than two.
“There’s going to be an easy narrative of ‘that’s not good,'” the business publication reported him as saying at its event. “But it is. And I just ask you to try to be objective about it when that moment comes — because I think it will.”
That absurdity — frankly, akin to Trumpian-level rhetoric wherein you plant a media seed that something you desire for your own reasons is “inevitable” as a strategy to make it more likely to happen — should get a lot more pushback than has been the case elsewhere so far.
Of course, Chicago would not be better served by a single hub carrier, any more than renters of automobiles would be better served if Avis Budget Group and Enterprise Mobility both vanished in a puff of airport fumes in Chicago, basically leaving anyone who wants to rent a car stuck with Hertz.
You think Hertz would suddenly cut its prices?
Call us old-fashioned at the Tribune, but we’re generally of the view that competition serves the customer.
And, no, Mr Kirby, airlines are no different. So, yes, we’re going with his “easy” narrative. United as our sole hub carrier would not be good. In fact, it would be the opposite of good.
We’ll allow for one exception to that statement. It could be very good for United shareholders. At least until they fork over the actual cash for a plane ticket.
At the moment that happened, airfares in this market would likely rise by 20% or more.
Just look over at Delta-dominated Detroit to see what happens when competition is so diminished. Throw in a few sample destinations into a search engine and compare the prices with those we enjoy here.
Kirby’s argument appears to be that with American neutered, United would then schedule flights to more exciting and economically vibrant places once the “cost” of having to compete on shorter distance feeder flights was either diminished or removed. He of course said nothing about the price of the tickets.
It’s true that growth at O’Hare has been constrained by the Federal Aviation Administration, rightly reacting to the existence of an ongoing construction project that is making some taxi times longer than the actual flight. But that’s a relatively short-term issue.
More Top Picks Best Steel Toe Work Boots For Flat Feet
It’s also true, as Kirby noted, that O’Hare has airspace constraints, like pretty much every other airport in a major city. London and New York are familiar with the situation.
Kirby is trying to convince Chicagoans that what we need here are more flights and that we are suffering for the lack thereof.
Yet we rarely have heard anyone complain that O’Hare lacks flights.
On the contrary, most Chicagoans and suburbanites of our acquaintance are of the view that the airport, with its growing number of foreign-carrier options, such as the arrival in November of Philippine Airlines offering flights to Manila, offers a veritable cornucopia of places to fly, especially now that American and United, engaged in good old, all-American competition, have amped up their schedules.
Compared, say, with the 1990s here, the suite of departures to points near and far is formidable. And it’s worth noting that Philippine Airlines is part of the OneWorld alliance. If American did not offer a lot of connector flights for travelers from Manila and beyond, that airline would not be coming here.
Moreover, not everyone wants to jet off to Ibiza or Nice. For folks with family in, say, Louisville, having two airlines offering several departures a day from O’Hare (not to mention Southwest from Midway) is what they most want from our airport. What good are more flights if nobody can afford to fly on them? Furthermore, from the travelers’ point of view, nothing could keep United on its service-oriented toes in Chicago better than another airline nipping at its heels.
Sure, Kirby would like the big airport largely to himself and to eat his competitors for breakfast.
Good for him. Not for us.
It’s not even an argument worth having.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email [email protected].