Originally Posted by
Probe
Kirby went from Dash 2 at an also ran airline (AW) to Dash 2 at a bigger also ran airline (USAir after the merger) to Dash 2 at the worlds largest airline. He wasn't going any higher so he came here.
Sometimes the cream rises to the top, sometimes * floats. Is Kirby rising or floating? We will see.
I hope he is rising.
Time will tell. It is refreshing, however, to have someone in flight ops that doesn't just cede market share every time someone comes in and tries to poach passengers. When we had the Shuttle, we owned 50% of all the west coast traffic and were making money hand over fist with large operations in Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, LAX, Burbank, Ontario, and John Wayne Airport. I certainly don't advocate the "airline with an airline" concept; my point is that EVERY time we reduce service to an area, a competitor steps in to fill the vacuum. For the past 18 years, we (pilots) have descried the philosophy of "shrink to profitability" as nonsense and finally we have a management team that seems to agree with us. I'm neither a fan nor a detractor of Kirby, but I don't agree with the idea of shrinking to maximize short term profit margins.