I'm still of the opinion that United, since the merger, wanted CLE to fail.  It was just waiting for the right time to pull the plug.

Airfares out of CLE have been skyrocketing on UA,  and  it's been a major complaint, especially among business travelers.  Connections in CLE were sometimes with several hour layovers; CLE had a higher percentage of turboprops than any other hub, and the continuing problems with Commutair, Silver and Republic and their prop fleets were a festering embarrassment to workers in CLE, and drove away many frequent fliers who were tired of the incessant hours-long delays and cancellations due to MX on those aircraft; the down-gauging of IAH and EWR service to CR7's or E170's during the week, and to ERJ's on weekends to both markets pissed off frequent fliers to no end.

None of the core problems in CLE, especially the utter lack of reliability among the turboprop operations, were ever addressed.  The problem became acute in 2011, when Commutair got a hold of the Q300's.   They had a terrible time getting them certified to fly, and let the MX on the 200's lapse as a result.  In the summer of 2011, I'd wager that at least 60% of all Commutair flights in/out of CLE canceled due to MX.  I worked a lot of days at Piers 17 and 28, and it was an utter embarrassment.  I can even remember aircraft being called good to go-I could see them being brought up from the hanger, and as they were coming up, they were canceled.  It was a joke.  So, what did CLE management do?  They took away the employee's ability to get buses and other ground transportation for people going to cities like ERI, CMH, BUF, etc, because we were using them so often.  So we inconvenienced our pax even more.   

Then when UA signed a new contract with Commutair, they made completion factor a way for C5 to get paid by UA.  Consequently, C5 since then has run flights 4, 5, 6 hours, late, and delaying the rest of the ops,  just to meet the completion factor thresholds.  I worked a flight in 2013 to ROC that ended up 10 HOURS late, because of a broken prop in IND.   It was supposed to be a 4pm departure, and left just before 2am.  In fact, when the crew and aircraft arrived in CLE, the crew informed the agents that dispatch told them to simply overfly CLE and leave the 16 pax still waiting to go to ROC there, because they were worried about the crew timing out and not being able to complete the flight.

Through all of this, local and corporate management consistently said they were aware of all these problems and all these complaints, yet nothing changed.

So, yes, I believe UA wanted CLE to fail.  They got their wish.