Originally Posted by
sailingfun
No, most of it was announced before the TA. All the airlines are reducing growth plans next year. They are in a panic to show a positive RASM so the stock prices will trend up and their options gain value.
But medium to long term, if they leave profitable flying on the table for endless growth mode LCC's to gobble up, they will ultimately make less profits. Blindly chasing short term RASM is B-School JV team theatrics. We just got done doing something similar for different reasons by delaying even meager hiring until the last possible second just to massage one quarter's numbers barely enough to move the needle and its straining us big time. Gifting the LCC's extra RASM to artificially preserve ours, when we'd be highly profitable either way, is very myopic thinking. This will result in many dozens of additional LCC narrow bodies flying against us going forward that otherwise wouldn't have been sustainable for them, while also opening some doors for foreign poachers even wider. All for small additional numbers for maybe a couple quarters.