Can you throw darts? How do you think we found AXM

I cant tell you that :-) Until I win the powerball that is, then I can quit and fly around in a Falcon reliving the days of trijet glory.

On a serious note I can expand a bit on fees. The problem that is two-fold.

1. You have logistical issues with implementation. This is mostly an IT problem that has to do with manipulating various things such as time of day, day of week as well as controlling it from a demand curve perspective. Its not really a problem specific to Spirit BTW, its a collective problem for a lot of carriers who are wading through uncharted territory when it comes to how do you set up various systems to deal with it. You have to be mindful to the fact that there is a large chunk of our distribution that we (along with everyone but SWA) dont control and even getting things such as flat-rate fees are being implemented only by acts of god.

Secondly, every market behaves differently and even though you have your averages you have to figure out what works where and why do some things not work in certain places that are of similar distance for example but do not work in others. Demographics and economics come into play here.

As far as the optimal stage length at different oil prices...the general industry consensus is that they rise as prices get higher because capacity discipline dictates that you cut down on short haul stuff where the tendency to make more revenue is less. Now, theres always outliers and it depends on other factors like for example what type of fleet and airline you operate.

Notice for example that Intra-Cal flying even during the recession was pretty soundproof, so was Intra-Texas but Florida took a massive hit. SWA for example chopped ECP-MCO, JAX-FLL, MCO-RSW, MCO-FLL and JAX-TPA without even thinking twice about it. If you think a handful of Saab 340s and 2 E90s up the I-95 corridor have since picked up that slack you better re-examine your numbers. Secondly, in the last round of high oil you were in deep crap if you were a regional flying 50 seaters much more than if you were flying a narrowbody mainline aircraft for the simple reason that your revenue opportunities are almost 0 on those aircraft. That is where Y+/J, Wifi etc. etc. was born out of on the 70-100 seat aircraft market. Without it, that group would be next.

Dont worry about it. I did fly in a E145 sim once.... :-)

Thanks. I try to inform and educate as much as I can, with limits of course. This isnt my first airline, nor is it my second so I can tell you that the schism of whats happening on the ground and in the air exists everywhere (And I also agree with you that it does exist). Sure, it may be more at some places than others but I wouldnt put NK in that "more" category, with the #1 reason being that this is still a fairly small operation so its not a monumental task to get everyone on the same page. Its important for us to not fall into a hole where speculation runs so rampant that theres a group of people that believe the company is going down a path that is completely untrue. Ive seen this before and it is an absolute killer.

On a more micro level when it comes to strategy all I can say is that if you are a pilot you shouldn't be offended even one iota at being kept in the dark on anything that is more than talking points/generalities or whatever you want to call them because you are in the same position that even 99% of people at every airline headquarters are....they just dont know. This sort of stuff has to be kept closely guarded for competitive reasons and divulging sensitive information is a massive no-no, which in some cases could even lead to legal trouble.

For the same reasons while I read what people post in this thread, and others...with the regional forum being my personal favorite if I want to feel better about my day....about contracts and the technicalities of flying I am purely an observer and try to educate myself because I dont know much about actually living it. That being said I wish more people observed and listened because how will you ever fix anything if you dont even know its broken? Maybe the problem is half the time people dont care and not think about how their job or a click of the mouse affects others...all of us probably have fallen into that trap of not thinking about consequences because it does not directly affect us at some point in our lives.

Again, a loaded question hehe. Its hard to say what will happen in 10 years and I dont think anyone really knows the answer. You make business decisions based on short and some mid-term probabilities but that is about it. Keep in mind what the market was like in 2004. The legacies were ailing, FL was just ramping up and the L1011 was only 3 summers gone from Delta.

I can share with you my personal opinion. Apart from any sort of merger/acquisition, one which I doubt will happen in the short term, our growth is on more solid economic ground than anyone elses. Theres obviously going to be micro-level humps to go over, some of which you talked about in your post but on macro level this is the best business plan in the US market when it comes to the numbers. We hold such a small piece of the pie that there is nowhere else to go but up. Thats not a pure optimist opinion, but a realistic one.
The micro-level headwinds that we face are actually quite minute if you want to compare them to OAs. Doubt they seem that way in everyday life because they affect us on a personal basis but take a step back for a second and think about if dirty cockpits are worse than having 20% of your fellow pilots who think they just got their heads chopped off by the guillotine by your group who was supposedly colluding with salaried employees. Theres always positives and negatives.

I think it'll be a huge success if we capture a couple % of the total US market share and put in more orders looking out in the future. Frankly, I think that a lot of the talk on here about stagnation is a bit exaggerated. Im not saying youre going to grow 25% every quarter but it almost seems like people think that our fleet should grow 20% yearly until 2040 or something. Give it time...ship isnt sinking or even slowing down, from where we are and from the market that we could potentially capture in the US and rest of the Americas is hilariously large and untapped.

2024 we should have critical mass to make some really big plays, we dont have much political clout right now and its hurting us. Its a question of size so we cant fix it quickly like we can fix some sort of inventory control or schedule problem. FR attained this level a few years ago and now they can dictate external parties to accommodate them and not where they were and we are now...accommodating the external parties.

When the time is right. Variety of factors are in play. Market conditions in the PacNW, facility access, Doug Parkers finger on the hub ejection button, CPEs etc. etc.

Do you want the short answer...or the long answer? The short one is a sentence. The long one is a few paragraphs.