Originally Posted by
Name User
Two things look what the ULCCs have done in Europe. They've decimated the "legacy" carriers over there. Those carriers have started offshoots of their own in order to compete. Second ULCCs are quite a bit of a money press. Their margins are about 50% more than ours.
One issue I have with this is our CASM is around 12¢ per mile. Spirits is 7¢. We could 'compete' all we want but we will lose money and never make it up in volume (the old way of doing business).
That being said we have to stop Spirit and Frontier. If we don't take this stand they will gut our business and our jobs. We'll eventually all be working for an ULCC, Delta and possibly UAL will be OK (Delta has figured out that their brand is important). As posted in this thread we have a horrible 'premium' product and management is more interested in buying back stock than investing in the company right now. Eventually our profits will start to come down and we'll have less and less money to invest back into the company. This is what happened to all the legacies over the past 15 years, a long slow death.
This. The ME3 and foreign airlines blow our premium product out of the water. Now with transatlantic ULCCs they will siphon off the low fare passengers too. Combined with domestic ULCCs we are facing a serious threat and I'm just happy management is trying to compete.
I honestly don't think anyone hired in the last few years will ever see the left seat of a group 4 airplane here. I don't think AA will go out of business but I can totally see constant shrinkage down to just connecting international travelers and domestic flying from our fortress hubs.
If cabotage goes away then all that even may be in jeopardy. The only constant is change.