I'll concede that SWA coming to ATL is an annoyance to DAL.
I'll concede that DAL would prefer that SWA not operate in ATL.
That being said, ATL is ATL because of DAL and their route network. It really could have been just about anywhere in the region.
Take out DAL and what ATL really is...the part that SWA is competing for, is just another 500k large O&D market. Right between Tucson and Albuquerque
The passenger that is flying from MCO-LHR via ATL is not going to all of a sudden be fying on SWA, regardless of how funny your FA PAs are.
With that it mind, it is hard to imagine SWA CRUSHING Delta when you won't even be competing for the majority of the passengers.
The bigger CRUSHING possiblity comes from the passenger that chooses to go MCO-DAL-LAX vs MCO-ATL-LAX. But that has always been there and has nothing to do with SWA getting into ATL.
Later
I agree with much of what you said- Atlanta city limits are relatively small- but business wise its largerthan it's population- and you have to see how that interacts w/ swa's desire to attain more business travel. With so many fortune 500 companies based in ATL- we can't ignore it.
ATL does have only about 500,000 people- small- but it's ranked 8th as an economic center in the US. It's also ranked 8 in terms of GDP per capita. Now multiply that by all the US population that does business in ATL.
List of cities by GDP
This is a list of the richest cities and/or their metropolitan areas in the world by GDP according to PricewaterhouseCoopers[1] and other sources.
For cities in the OECD, data are based on city-level GDP per capita estimates on 2002 data from the OECD’s Competitive Cities report (2006), projected forward by PricewaterhouseCoopers to 2008. For non-OECD cities, data are not readily available from a single source. In some cases GDP per capita estimates at city level were available from national sources, but in many cases PricewaterhouseCoopers was only able to make approximate estimates based on plausible ratios of city-to-national GDP per capita.[1]
As such, the 2008 urban agglomeration GDP estimates should only be taken as broadly indicative of relative economic size of these cities in both OECD and non-OECD countries, as through PricewaterhouseCooper's methods only. Other surveys and methodologies, such as surveys from national governments, or other private companies were not taken into account when this list was compiled.
Show List of cities in the world by GDP
Show Top 5 per region
Show Top 10 cities in the European Union
Hide Top 10 cities in the United States
Rank City State GDP in $ID B Population M GDP per capita $ID K Area
1 New York City *****New York $ 1,466 19.25 $ 78.6 M
2 Los Angeles *****California $ 792 12.22 $ 64.8 M
3 Chicago *****Illinois $ 574 9.80 $ 58.6 M
4 Philadelphia *****Pennsylvania $ 388 5.36 $ 72.4 M
5 Washington, D.C. *****District of Columbia $ 375 4.25 $ 88.2 M
6 Boston *****Massachusetts $ 338 4.72 $ 71.6
7 Dallas *****Texas $ 304 4.47 $ 68.0
8 Atlanta *****Georgia (U.S. state) $ 301 3.36 $ 89.6 C
9 San Francisco *****California $ 297 4.39 $ 67.7 M
10 Houston *****Texas $ 292 4.47
