Grumble, you are parroting a UAL beancounter, and the excuses they use for not doing better.

Cheaper landing fees? Yeah a little. But they run an EXTREMELY inefficiently orientated hub system. Running all those pax thru ATL means they fly those pax 20-40% more seat miles to connect them to their destination than we probably do. The vast majority of their pax going through ATL are connecting. A much larger percentage of our pax originate at one of our well positioned hubs. We simply fly them less miles to get them to their destination. I can't believe that isn't several times the savings as the difference in landing fees.

We have both been here a long time, and have heard a couple of decades worth of weak excuses as to why we aren't doing as well as our competitors. The "landing fee excuse" is just version 12.1, circa 2016.