Originally Posted by
ghilis101
why do they want to shrink the AE fleet? Seems like an emerging business model these days is a focus on international flying to produce revenue on the big boys side of the house, while the regional fleet takes care of business domestically via more efficient operating costs (fuel and labor) and more daily departures.
Arpey has stated many times that he wants to further trim total capacity of the entire system. I expect this to continue until after APAs contract has been negotiated, then perhaps see a slight expansion in the international flying and replacing some of the older widebodies in the fleet. The only way airlines can successfully raise the prices of tickets is to reduce the number of seats going from A to B first.
If there are 5 daily flights going from JFK-LAX and each flight has 200 seats available then thats 1000 available seats to buy for customers. Say there are 900 pax buying those tickets. It would make more sense to take away 1 flight making a total of 800 available seats and raising the price. You will have 100 people scrambling for a ticket since there isnt a glut of empty seats now, they will be willing to pay more.