Originally Posted by Name User

Personally I disagree. Load factors have declined in the past few months while everyone else is posting decent gains. SWA traffic alone increased 13% at DAL in October when the Wright Agreement went away.

AA is huge in Mexico. The US and Mexico just opened up their airports to no longer limit new entrants (can you say, open door for SWA?).

We have the following fleet types:
E190
S80
B737*
B757
B767
B777*
B787*
A319/A320/A321*
A330*
A350*

* denotes new orders even! Most not even the next gen NEO! ***!
The exact opposite of efficient! DAL is running older planes now while fuel is low, and will buy a bunch of the next gen stuff in the next couple years. Why buy last decades technology? Instead they are paying down debt to unheard of levels for a legacy airline.

Spirit is cleaning our clock on prices, SWA/DAL/jetBlue in customer satisfaction. Where does AA fit in? About the only thing AA has going for its size, which will shrink as time goes on as SWA, Spirit, Frontier etc. pick up the routes as they grow.

The $2 bil in investment they announced is a bandaid, and won't fix the underlying mis-management issues. Not to mention the $1 bil they are burning buying back stock this year.

The company refuses to pay and treat frontline employees well, and that reflects in the quality of the customer service. Hell the gate/ticket agents won't even acknowledge your presence even if working the flight these days.

United is in the same situation except they have one thing we don't, and that's a killer route structure and network. If I were to guess, I'd say we'll be a 9,000 strong pilot group inside of 5 years, with the loss of thousands to other carriers picking up the slack.