Cleveland’s Hopkins Airport is located 14 miles southwest of downtown Cleveland near Brook Park, Ohio. It served as Continental’s 3rd largest hub from the late 80s through the 2000’s up until their merger with United Airlines. Its primary purpose was to connect the Midwest, Appalachia, and Northeast to points West and Southwest. After the merger between United and Continental the hub at CLE was closed, but in this article we will look at the hubs heyday in the 90’s and 2000’s.
About Continental's Hub in Cleveland
- Population within 100 KM of CLE (as of 2023): 3,964,107
- Passengers carried in 2008 by Continental: 7,029,348
- Passengers carried by all carriers in 2008: 10,706,327
- Continental Airlines Marketshare in CLE in 2008: 65.7%
- Passengers carried at CLE from April 2024-April 2025: 9,655,845
For decades Continental Airlines maintained a hub at Cleveland’s Hopkins international airport. The hub as it was most recently known opened in the late 1980s and was expanded significantly in the 1990s. The hope was that the Continental hub at CLE would continue to have good fortunes into the new millennium. Unfortunately, despite an announced uptick in 2007, this would not be the case. The September 11 attacks, the 2008 Financial Crisis, and finally a merger with United Airlines would deliver the hubs demise.
But before it was eventually closed, CLE played an important role for Continental Airlines. We start with a look at CO’s operation in CLE in the early 90’s where the hub grew substantially over the course of the decade. Below are passengers onboarded at CLE on CO by year:
- 1991: 1,645,433
- 1992: 1,900,416
- 1993: 1,734,808
- 1994: 2,390,481
- 1995: 2,517,373
- 1996: 2,492,786
- 1997: 2,609,887
- 1998: 2,527,722
- 1999: 2,537,508
Things seemed stable in the 90s despite that the hub’s load factor was relatively low (averaging between the high 50s and low 70s in this decade). However, this was not unusual in the 90s. Most airline hubs would average in the 60’s or low 70’s in the 1990’s. In the 2000’s and 2010’s, there would be several bumps in the road that would lead to the hubs unraveling.
Issue One: the September 11 Terrorist Attacks
This was an issue across the industry. Where CO’s hub at CLE is concerned, they went from 2,427,480 onboards in 2000 to 1,675,747 onboards in 2002. It was also at this time that CO’s CLE-LGW service began to dwindle from daily year round service in 2000 to summer seasonal after summer of 2003.
Stroke of Luck: CLE gets another chance in 2007
In 2007, it was announced CO would take advantage of an incentive package from the state of Ohio to grow CLE by 40% between 2007 and 2009. There would also be a dozen new destinations offered at the hub to be flown by regional equipment. This included new service to BHM, CHS, GRB, MEM, OMA, SAV, and TUL among expansions to other cities. It was via this announcement that the stage was set for CLE’s most prominent year as a hub: 2008.
2008: CO's Hub at CLE Reaches its Peak.
- Destinations Served by CO at CLE in 2008: 96
- Passengers at CO’s CLE hub in 2008 (non-directional, averaged): 3,546,750
- Load Factor at CLE on CO/CO Subsidiary Operated Flights: 79.32%
Busiest Routes on CO from CLE in 2008 by yearly passenger count:
- Houston (IAH): 251,836
- Las Vegas (LAS): 202,329
- Newark (EWR): 173,914
- Orlando (MCO): 153,562
- Los Angeles (LAX): 148,498
- New York (LGA): 123,028
- Phoenix (PHX): 108,064
- Boston (BOS): 102,292
- Chicago (ORD): 91,433
- Tampa (TPA): 82,605
Routes with the Highest Load Factors at Continental's hub at CLE in 2008...
- Las Vegas (LAS): 89.43%
- Los Angeles (LAX): 89.41%
- Seattle (SEA): 89.17%
- San Francisco (SFO): 88.74%
- Nashville (BNA): 88.17%
- Fort Myers (RSW): 88.16%
- West Palm Beach (PBI): 87.93%
- Omaha (OMA): 86.27%
- Austin (AUS): 85.70%
- Denver (DEN): 85.63%
...and those with the Lowest Load Factors.
- New York (JFK): 43.15%
- Lexington (LEX): 40.27%
- DuBois, PA (DUJ): 39.78%
- Fort Wayne (FWA): 38.40%
- Charleston, WV (CRW): 36.13%
- Jamestown, NY (JHW): 30.78%
- Lewisburg, WV (LWB): 26.66%
- Toledo (TOL): 25.95%
- Cincinnati (CVG): 25.41%
- Oil City, PA (FKL): 17.98%
CLE-LGW: had a 63.88% LF in 2008 and CLE-CDG had a 72.65% LF in the same time period.
Fleet Breakdown at CO's CLE Hub in 2008:
What kind of O&D was CO getting in CLE in 2008? Below were the largest markets.
- Las Vegas (LAS): 321
- Orlando (MCO): 296
- Los Angeles (LAX): 234
- New York City (LGA): 227
- Newark (EWR): 186
- Fort Lauderdale (FLL): 166
- Houston (IAH): 160
- Chicago (ORD): 158
- Tampa (TPA): 158
- Phoenix (PHX): 149
CO carried 4,951 PDEW from their hub at CLE in 2008. This is compared with 12,616 at IAH and 15,745 at EWR.
The Financial Crisis of 2008 and the announcement of a merger in 2010. CO's hub at CLE fate is sealed.
CLE’s time at its peak was very short lived. By September 2008, CO had dropped 24 routes from CLE. Many of these dropped had just started mere months before. This was shortly after Delta and Northwest announced an intent to merge which would foreshadow what was to come for Continental.
In 2010, then CEO of Continental Jeff Smisek said: “Cleveland has to earn its status as a hub every day.”. This underscored what CLE was up against. It was clear that, unless something changed, CLE’s days as a hub were number. In 2012 when the hub was formally dropped, it was said that the hub hadn’t been profitable in over a decade. Was that actually true? Probably, but not all for the reasons one might think.
Its true that CLE was hurt by its geographic position (being between ORD and IAD) and its national/global stature relative to United’s other hubs, but there were also things beyond the control of the city or airport at play. Below, I outline why I think CLE collapsed in on itself while UA’s other hubs (Houston and Newark) continue to be important parts to the UA network.
Why did a hub at CLE fail? It's not all at the feet of Cleveland...
Reason 1) CLE was a good station for O&D flights, but it did not perform the functions of a hub well.
CLE was positioned to a hub for Appalachia and the Rust Belt. These are not areas with high amounts of O&D outside the major cities. One of the things, for example, that makes a hub like CLT work so well despite not being a massive O&D market is that it is positioned as a hub for Florida and the Southeast. These are two areas with high propensities of travel to and from them. As we see from the low load factor list, many of the cities served don’t even have commercial air service today or are on heavy subsidy. The region for which CO tried to make CLE a hub didn’t have the demand to fuel hub growth.
It is my opinion that CLE did fine as an O&D city. CLE grew by 2,394 in domestic O&D PDEW from 2008 to 2024, but it would not have saved the hub.
Reason 2) Building on point one, not only was there little demand to the unique destinations CO's CLE hub did offer service to, but most of the airports that had the highest number of connections via CLE could just as easily be served via IAH or EWR.
Of the top 10 connections, only one would have specifically required a connection in CLE or be forced to choose another airline. This is true for most connections that connected via CLE. It showed that CLE was not necessary as a hub other than the O&D from the city itself.
Reason 3) CLE was over-dependent on Regional Jets and Turboprops.
Of the 202 daily departures, 160 were on regional equipment. These aircraft have high CASM and that is especially true for the regional jets. This puts the hub at a cost disadvantage from the get-go.
Reason 4) Even when CLE's expansion was announced in 2007, it was made abundantly clear it was in large part due to incentives and IAH/EWR being unable to take on more traffic.
In the article titled “Continental to Boost U.S. Capacity in Cleveland Hub” by Jay Boehmer from September 23, 2007, several things stand out:
1) The mention of CO taking advantage of $16,000,000 in incentives.
2) This quote from a CO spokes person: “We’re reallocating 37- and 50-seat regional jets from Newark to Cleveland, and on a one-for-one basis we’ll replace them with the 74-seat Bombardier Q400 as well as other mainline aircraft in our fleet.”. This, at least to me, reads as though CLE was set up not just to be a reliever hub for UA but also to be a small aircraft dumping ground. The goal was always to build up and declutter EWR, not to build a sustainable hub at CLE.
3) This quote from aviation consultant Robert Mann: “The Newark facility is completely saturated and, of course, the Newark/New York airspace is completely saturated. Houston is completely backed up, so this gives them the opportunity to grow at Cleveland.”. It simply re-enforces the idea that Cleveland was grown because they could not grow elsewhere and could only grow with small equipment.
Reason 5) In a post 2010 aviation environment, there was only room for one major hub in the Eastern Great Lakes region. It was always going to be Detroit.
I mean this in no way to the region’s detriment, but the eastern sections of the Rust Belt and Appalachia are low growth regions that generate lower demand than other parts of the US. There is not now (nor was there really then) room for multiple hubs that cater to that population subset. We saw this play out with the Delta/Northwest merger where, when two hubs serving the region (Cincinnati and Detroit) were pitted against one another and the combined airline was forced to choose. In CLE’s case, after the CO/UA merger took place, the option post merger wasn’t between two hubs serving the region, but rather to divert resources away from the region entirely in favor of hubs in regions/cities with much demand, more global presence, and more wealth.
There was only ever going to be one sustainable hub in the region and it was always going to be DTW. The reasons why I feel this way are below:
1) Facilities: DTW simply has a newer, nicer, and larger space for a hub.
2) VFR Travel: One thing Detroit has that was lacking in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh is a large immigrant population with a propensity for travel. By comparison as of 2023, Detroit is home to 476,525 immigrants largely from the Middle East and South Asia. If one were to add the immigrant populations of NE Ohio, the Pittsburgh metro area, and the Cincinnati metro area, it would not match that number. I stress this is not a bad or good thing but immigrant populations do help fuel VFR related travel.
3) The last and most important thing: the auto industry. Detroit is one of the global centers of the auto industry which fuels large scale international travel. This brand of corporate travel usually has high fares associated with it as well. Cleveland has a more diverse economy which is great for economic stability, but does not fuel travel to the same degree.
All in all, Continental and United’s hub in Cleveland was sunk by several factors. Some of those had to do with Cleveland itself (the size, economy, growth, and geography of it) but many didn’t (CO’s strategy for the hub, the high CASM equipment it depended on, and a environment of airline mergers where proximity to other cities was of greater importance). UA at CLE today is just over 1/3 of what its peak hub capacity was. It’s too bad really. Cleveland is a wonderful city with great bones, and I personally had great experiences transiting there in the mid-2000s. But the dynamics of air travel today make it difficult to envision CLE as a hub anytime soon.