CLE Heating Up on Demand...

Whoa. Suddenly, everybody’s Hot in CLE.

There is a major shift in power at some of America’s mid-sized airports. Cleveland Hopkins International is the perfect example of what has been happening. Just two short years ago, United Airlines had a hub at Hopkins. The legacy carrier had 58 non-stop routes out of the airport. Fast forward two years and the number of daily non-stop destinations served by United is down to 17. That figure will soon drop to 15 by May when the airline ends service to STL and LAS
The reductions have left Cleveland residents without direct flights to important destinations. This isolation will, however, be short lived. Low-cost carriers are already very active in mid-sized markets like Cleveland, and they are stepping in to fill any voids left when the big airlines pull out.
Low-cost carriers moving in?
For example, Spirit, Frontier and Southwest all fly between CLE and LAS. Clevelanders will be without a direct connection to Saint Louis for only about a month. Southwest will start service to the Gateway City from Cleveland in early June.
Why is United pulling out of Cleveland? The city is still a center for manufacturing, though it is not the industrial juggernaut that it once was. It has successfully diversified into other sectors, such as insurance, tech, healthcare and banking. 11 Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in the city. So there is demand for flights for business travelers.


A United spokesperson explained the decision to drop the Saint Louis and Las Vegas routes recently: "We continually review supply and demand for service in all of our markets. We made the difficult decision to end service between Cleveland and our St. Louis and Las Vegas routes because they didn't meet our expectations and are no longer sustainable."
United does not appear to be pulling out of Cleveland altogether. It certainly does not have enough of a presence for the airport to be considered a hub or even a focus city, but the airline will still be operating 15 routes. It looks like their strategy is simply to keep the most lucrative routes (ORD, DEN, LAX, LGA) and leave everything else for their budget-minded competitors.

Frontier Airlines is picking up some of the slack by adding four routes at Hopkins this year: to LAX, PHL, PDX and SFO.