‘Tapped out’: What’s behind CLT airport capacity crunch for American Airlines
American Airlines is bumping up against a capacity issue in its hub at Charlotte’s airport because of gate access and plane size, according to an industry analyst.
During the company’s recent first-quarter earnings call, Vice Chair Steve Johnson briefly addressed the capacity issue at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. He said the airport is a geographically well-placed hub for American Airlines, with a low cost for connections.
But the airline is not in a position to grow any further at the moment, Johnson added.
American Airlines is constrained by the number of available gates and their utilization at Charlotte Douglas, according to Bob Mann, an airline industry analyst with R.W. Mann & Company in Port Washington, New York.
CLT’s role as a regional hub adds another complex level with the size of regional planes available for shorter trips. Across the industry, 50-seat planes are being replaced with aircraft with more than 70 seats.
“And the issue there doesn’t seem to be a big one,” he said. “But on the other hand, if you’re connecting markets at a hub that can only support 50 seats, then putting a 76-seat aircraft in there is way too much capacity.”
American can’t easily add new routes due to gate limitations. This scarcity of gates makes it challenging to serve smaller markets with larger aircraft, Mann said.
The airline said in a statement to The Charlotte Observer that it’s proud to offer a range of service in the region, according to a statement. “Charlotte Douglas International Airport is critically important for American Airlines,” the company stated.
American operates 670 peak-day departures from CLT to more than 170 destinations worldwide. This includes new service this year to Athens, Greece, and Aspen, Colorado.
’Simply out of space’
American Airlines uses larger planes that are part of its main fleet with full-service operations for longer routes. But CLT concourse E, which handles most of the regional flights for American, can’t handle the larger wingspan and length of such aircraft.
The current size of CLT also hinders expansion of larger planes, which are already operating at a high rate. They can’t serve smaller markets, Mann said.
The airport’s layout is another factor working against capacity for more flights by American, Mann said, especially when it comes to catching a connecting flight from different concourses at the terminal.
“It’s like trying to cross a six-lane highway on foot,” Mann said. “It’s a tough thing to do, especially if it’s a 30-minute connection and oddly enough 25 minutes is legal as a connection. There’s no way a sane person would try that.”
Significant efforts have been made to expand Charlotte Douglas, and it’s already twice the size it was in 2000, when it was dominated by American predecessor company US Airways. American Airlines has long emphasized having a major presence in Charlotte.
“It’s just essentially tapped out in terms of size,” Mann said of the number of American-designated gates and the airport’s size.
CLT also improved Concourse A, but that work mostly benefits competitors of American Airlines, Mann said. The majority of the gates at Concourse A are used by Delta Air Lines.
The Concourse A expansion opened in September and added 10 more gates, bringing the total to 124 for the entire airport.
“The emphasis has been to expand the airport and American certainly benefited from that,” Mann said. “But it utilizes gates far more efficiently than other competitors. I would say it’s simply out of space.”
Within an hour, there are about 60 or 70 flight arrivals for American Airlines, Mann said. Roughly two-thirds of those passengers are for connecting flights. And 60 to 70 aircraft are leaving within the next hour.
“So, you have an hour of arrivals, 30 to 40 minutes of connecting activity, then you have an hour of departures,” he said. “And then that’s followed by the next (periods of time) for the same thing happening.”
This happens roughly nine times a day for American Airlines at Charlotte Douglas, Mann added, while other airlines are not as busy, with fewer connecting flights.
More on Charlotte Douglas and American Airlines
Charlotte Douglas is the sixth busiest airport in the world for takeoffs and landings, according to Airports Council International preliminary rankings released in April.
The airport had 596,583 flights last year — an 11% increase from 2023 when the airport was seventh internationally.
Charlotte is the second largest hub for the Fort Worth, Texas-based American Airlines. It accounts for about 90% of all flights out of the airport.
The airline offers thousands of daily flights to more than 350 destinations in more than 60 countries.
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This story was originally published April 30, 2025 at 5:46 AM with the headline "‘Tapped out’: What’s behind CLT airport capacity crunch for American Airlines."
