Christ sakes! Didn’t someone already say something along the lines of past performance is not an indicator for future outcomes? The industry is very different vs late 90’s/early 2000’s. United is not the same as it was then as well.

When times are tough in the future we won’t be shoveling money into the fireplace with empty gas guzzling 747’s plying the skies or inefficient 737’s, 727’s or DC-10’s breaking down every other leg.

We don’t fly routes year round anymore for prestige either. If it’s not working we axe it completely. Poor performance during a certain season and down it goes for the slow months. 777-200/300 looking to be too much lift? 787 to fill the revenue gap.

Sure we still have a revenue issue that needs to be corrected. Maybe we can finally get that resolved, maybe we can’t. Either way, United looks to be far better of as a viable company vs days of the past. I think it’s reasonable to recognize that things can go south very fast in this industry and nobody can be sure that airline A is going to be better over a 20-30 year career than airline B, regardless of past performance from a given point in time.