Originally Posted by 319wisperer

I fully agree with your first point, I don't think AZA-LAS was a shot at AAY, perse, to send a message. I do think NK saw potential Benjamin's and wanted the route to work but the loads/yields didnt work as such, and now Spirit is Audi 5000, G (out of there in lay terms) between the two cities.

However your second point couldn't be more off. Spirit has pulled out of profitable routes of late, when the aircraft could be used more profitably elsewhere.

When you have leases on planes that are relatively expensive you must do two things: 1) fly the s$@& out of them (14 or so hours a day as NK does) and 2) fly them where they make the most possible money. That often means cutting the good routes to add potentially better routes (you hope)

On the other hand, when you own many of your own oldies but goodies like AAY does, any profit no matter how small is worth chasing because what else is the plane doing while basking for hours in the Nevada sun, getting a tan? May as well put that pig to work.

As a E-speedie Winger I don't think one method is better than the next, just 2 different ways of getting Buck, Marilou and their critters down to Disney for the long weekend, and getting some aviation fools and aviation investors some cash out of the deal.

Originally Posted by skybolt

Sorry Chopper, didn't intend to malign AAY. In fact my comment didn't say anything about AAY, it especially didn't say you were afraid of NK. I said that our CEO likes to send message to competitors. Also notice that I didn't say which competitor.

AAY wasn't even on my mind when I made that post.

As Sailor and 319Whisperer wrote, NK will leave profit.....for bigger profit, but my point was that NK may have never intended for the route to be long term when it initiated the run.

For example, once in the recent past, NK possessed the ability to fly a run over another carrier's money run. BBB held that in reserve and didn't fly it as long as the other carrier left us alone on our profit routes.

It is also possible that the Mesa run was initiated when substantive progress towards a merge with or sell to AAY was being made.

My point was simply that our CEO has a history of making multiple moves to achieve his goal. We usually only see the final move of the sequence.

FWIW, I'd love for AAY to buy Spirit. From what I see, AAY treats it's employees far better than the way Spirit treats us. Could be wrong.