Thanks Marker Inbound That is a relevant observation.
In the case of ASE most of the flights are duplicated. United has 9 flights a day to Denver. (Which is 200 miles away - so the majority of passengers are transiting Denver, Denver residents would just drive.)
There are two Delta fliight to ATL within 90 minutes of each other!
Likewise 2+ daily to Chicago, SFO and Houston on United. 4x daily on American to DFW.
It is very wasteful - if the airport could accept larger planes there would be a significant reduction in flights.
We are pretty much all tourist traffic so people are more flexible than business traffic.
If we had better range options there would be fewer people transiting through Denver and would gladly accept a non stop.
I suspect that overall flights would be reduced by close to half.
That is what is happening at similar airports in the area.
The irony is the same people who oppose the reconfiguration of the airport also identify as "greens" - but are pushing to keep the fuel inefficient airplanes , RJ70 and E170 as the only options.
There is a lot of emotion involved here and rational thought is not what wins these arguments. There is a big concern that bigger planes will mean more visitors.