If they are so smart why do they go bankrupt?

I recently bought an airline ticket to FLL using the online discounter Hotwire.com. This ticket flies out of Atlanta (ATL) but connects thru Charlotte (CLT) then on to FLL. The effective discount was almost 50% if one compares the fare to a flight that flies out of CLT direct to FLL.

Since my city of residence is equidistant to both ATL or CLT, I wanted to skip the ATL to CLT leg and fly out of CLT to take advantage of cheaper parking rates. It turns out you can't do this according to both Hotwire.com and US Airways. Hotwire tells me that they have an agreement with airlines that if the passenger does not show up for the first leg of the flight, the rest of the itenerary is effectively cancelled.

How's that for an effective prevention of arbitrage? Why such a policy? The answer perhaps is because ATL is Delta's hub while CLT is a US Airways hub. Competiton forces US Airways to cut its fare when flying out of ATL. Monopoly power allows it to increase its fare at its hub. Point to point fliers like Southwest are slowly chipping away at this hub market power.