The closure of United’s Miami hub after 9/11 and the failed attempts to merge United and US Airways left the Star Alliance without a South Florida hub. In addition American Airlines, who dominated Miami and had crushed the competition from United in the 1990’s down the road in Miami, had moved aggressively into Fort Lauderdale adding international/Puerto Rico service to Nassau, San Juan, Port-Au-Prince, Santo Domingo and Caracas by mid-2003.
In 2004, US Airways was plunged in bankruptcy and had dismantled both its Pittsburgh hub and its once-successful intra-state Florida operation. But interestingly while the airline used bankruptcy to dump long-term gate leases they had signed at Tampa and Orlando’s airports they continued to hoard gates in Fort Lauderdale despite scaling down operations throughout the state, something airline analysts at the time felt was odd. The reason soon became clear -US Airways intended to open an international gateway that would eventually become a full blown hub in Fort Lauderdale.
In August 2004, US Airways announced the opening of the hub.
The original hub plan in terms of flights/destinations looked like this:
Baltimore 2x daily
Boston 3x daily
Cancun 1x daily
Charlotte 7x daily
Chicago-O’Hare 3x daily (codeshare with United)
Denver 3x daily (codeshare with United)
Freeport 1x daily (codeshare with Bahamasair)
Guatemala City 1x daily
Hartford/Springfield 1x daily
Key West 4x daily (US Airways Express)
Kingston 1x daily
Nassau 3x daily (US Airways Express)
Newark 1x daily
New York-LGA 5x daily
Orlando 1x daily (US Airways Express)
Panama City, Panama 1x daily
Philadelphia 9x daily
Pittsburgh 3x daily
Providence 1x daily
Providenciales 1x daily (US Airways Express)
San Jose, Costa Rica 1x daily
San Juan 2x daily
Santo Domingo 1x daily
San Salvador 1x daily
Tampa 1x daily (US Airways Express)
Washington-Dulles 2x daily (codeshare with United)
Washington-National 5x daily
In addition to the above listed flights, by November of 2004 US Airways applied for a number of international routes such as Fort Lauderdale to Port-Au-Prince, Port of Spain, San Pedro Sula, Aruba and Bonaire which were intended to begin in late 2005 but never commenced.
By May 2005, right before the airline merged with America West the destination roster from Fort Lauderdale looked like this as several destinations had already been dropped and frequencies to others reduced:
Baltimore 1x daily
Boston 1x daily
Cancun 1x daily
Charlotte 8x daily
Chicago-O’Hare 3x daily (codeshare with United)
Denver 3x daily (codeshare with United)
Freeport 1x daily (codeshare with Bahamasair)
Guatemala City 1x daily
Key West 4x daily (US Airways Express)
Kingston 1x daily
Nassau 2x daily (codeshare with Bahamsair)
Newark 1x daily
New York-LGA 2x daily
Orlando 1x daily (US Airways Express)
Panama City, Panama 1x daily
Philadelphia 10x daily
Pittsburgh 3x daily
San Jose, Costa Rica 1x daily
San Juan 2x daily
Santo Domingo 1x daily
San Salvador 1x daily
Washington-Dulles 2x daily (codeshare with United)
Washington-National 5x daily
In June 2005, after US Airways announced a merger with America West, service was discontinued from Fort Lauderdale to Panama City, Panama and San Salvador, El Salvador. Service to Guatemala City was moved to Charlotte in December 2005, but at that time Fort Lauderdale got a new nonstop to Montego Bay as well as an additional daily run to Santo Domingo.
Even once the operation ramped up, US Airways domestic market share in Fort Lauderdale never overtook Delta, American or Southwest . In fact, Delta continued to serve more nonstop destinations from Fort Lauderdale than US Airways throughout the period of US Airways attempts at a building a hub.
The airline was however the second largest international carrier from the airport and the largest US based one (Air Canada carried more international passengers from Fort Lauderdale from the late 1990’s until 2013 than any US airline. In 2014, they were overtaken by JetBlue Airways) which was a mean feat considering before August 2004, Cancun was the airline’s only nonstop international destination from FLL.
America West’s management that took control of the newly merged carrier and was not infatuated with the idea of competing in a difficult marketplace. Plans to launch service from Fort Lauderdale to San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as additional Caribbean destinations were scrapped in early 2006. By the time the airline merged its scheduling in May 2006, FLL was a much smaller focus city.
May 2006 US Airways Fort Lauderdale flights…a greatly reduced operation though former America West flights to Las Vegas and Phoenix added two extra dots to the map:
Cancun 1x daily
Charlotte 8x daily
Chicago-O’Hare 3x daily (codeshare with United)
Denver 2x daily (codeshare with United)
Freeport 1x daily (codeshare with Bahamasair)
Key West 3x daily (US Airways Express)
Kingston 1x daily
Las Vegas 1x daily
Montego Bay 1x daily
Nassau 2x daily (codeshare with Bahamsair)
New York-LGA 2x daily
Philadelphia 9x daily
Phoenix 2x daily
Pittsburgh 2x daily
Santo Domingo 2x daily
Washington-National 5x daily
The US Airways focus city was completely dismantled between the Summer of 2006 and January 2007 and was quickly replaced by a similar operation serving almost the same cities by Spirit Airlines who had come under the leadership of several members of the former US Airways management team that had conceived the hub in the first place. By late 2007, Spirit’s route map out of Fort Lauderdale roughly resembled US Airways map two years earlier.
US Airways Fort Lauderdale January 2007:
Cancun 1x daily
Charlotte 8x daily
Chicago-O’Hare 3x daily (codeshare with United)
Denver 3x daily (codeshare with United)
Freeport 1x daily (codeshare with Bahamasair)
Key West 1x daily (US Airways Express)
Las Vegas 1x daily
Nassau 2x daily (codeshare with Bahamsair)
Philadelphia 9x daily
Phoenix 2x daily
Pittsburgh 2x daily
Washington-National 5x daily
The Florida Squeeze 