Continental and United Airlines to Merge??????

[ICEcoldair881]

The big hype around Houston in the past week is the impending possible merger to create the World's largest airline.

fail. COA and UAL combined won't equal that of Delta/Northwest. DAL/NWA has 743 +41 orders and COA/UAL has (or will have rather) 699 +133 orders. By the end of everything, DAL/NWA will have 784 aircraft, and COA/UAL will have 832. currently though, DAL/NWA is bigger. And not to mention DAL/NWA won't be too happy with this COA/UAL being larger thing.

[swiftus27]

From what I understand, people in KCLE are justifiably worried. If you look at the map, it's the obvious one to go.

Washington? No.
Newark? No.
Chicago? No.

You forgot something MAJOR with this, though.  Chicago and Newark are pretty much full airports.  Newark is in a bad spot to be a commuter airport as it hugs the coast. 

In my opinion, there will be heated competition between Newark and Dulles.  Both are within a couple hundred NM and both are major international hubs.   Perhaps they will scale back their operations here because there must be a bunch of redundency. 

You NEED the link in the USA where CLE steps in.  It is not a terribly busy airport.  It is in a central location nationally (in terms of where the population of the states are).   Within just a couple hours flightime you can be anywhere.

Sadly, that means that CLE will lose most of its longer haul flights (unless AA, DA, or SW wants to pick them up)...   meaning many layover flights if you want to go anywhere West.  but will gain many shorter flights. 

My way I see it:  Use Denver as your NW USA hub.  Use Houston as your SW and Latin Hub.  Use Chicago as Intl domestic, Use Newark and Dulles as the SE USA and Intl hubs, and CLE will become the way you fly to all the other medium airports across the eastern 2/3rds of the USA.