United Airlines (UA, Chicago O'Hare) CEO Jeff Smisek has confirmed to his employees in an internal memo that the carrier plans to close down its hub operation at Cleveland in three phases between April and June. While Smisek says that "no city has been more supportive of its hub carrier", the demand for the hub simply would not be there. The hub United has inherited from the merger with Continental Airlines (Houston Intercontinental) is fairly close to its much larger hub at Chicago O'Hare and according to Smisek "hasn't been profitable for over a decade." United plans to cut capacity from Cleveland by 36% and total average daily departures by 70%. The majority of the cuts will be made to regional services operated by its United Express regional partners Chautauqua Airlines (Indianapolis International), CommutAir (Cleveland Hopkins), ExpressJet Airlines (Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson), SkyWest Airlines (OO, Salt Lake City) and Trans States Airlines (St. Louis Lambert International) from the airport. According to ch-aviation's schedule data, Chautauqua currently operates 36 daily departures with E145s, Commutair 27 daily departures with Dash 8-200s and Dash 8-300s, ExpressJet 49 daily ERJ-145 services, Skywest nine daily CRJ200 and CRJ700 flights while Trans States operates 10 daily departures also with ERJ-145s. According to Smisek's letter, 20 non-stop destinations will be retained. Besides service to its hub airports Chicago O'Hare, Denver International, Houston Intercontinental, Los Angeles International, New York Newark, San Francisco and Washington Dulles with mainline aircraft, United also plans to continue to serve "key business and leisure" destinations including Boston, Fort Lauderdale International, Fort Myers Southwest Florida, Orlando International, New York La Guardia, Tampa International and Washington National. The other six destinations to be retained reportedly are Albany, NY, Baltimore International, Dallas/Fort Worth, Las Vegas Harry Reid, Milwaukee General Mitchell and St. Louis Lambert International although this could not be verified by ch-aviation as of yet. It is unclear what will happen to the five essential air service destinations currently served by Silver Airways (3M, Fort Lauderdale International) with several Beech 1900D aircraft under a franchise agreement with United Airlines (UA, Chicago O'Hare).