Originally Posted by Name User

I think it's irrelevant. When other carriers have large profitable domestic operations (ie SWA) and have a higher margin than us, that would tend to dispel your theory.







So what's interesting about your quip about operating into "hamlets" is those hamlets often have a higher amount of pax and revenue than some of our international markets. If you have some spare time, you can look up bts.gov and see passenger throughput between origination and destination airports. A good example with our own operation is Tulsa to DFW tomorrow...almost 2000(!) pax between those city pairs tomorrow booked on us.



So Vasu/company uses government data such as that to pick routes and develop them. Some there isn't much data on, and a risk is taken.



I think AA's largest problem is branding in that we don't have one, we are just a generic transportation company. Nothing really sets us apart. Also I feel the "American" name hurts us overseas as well. Parker's idea was to not be a Walmart but a Target, basically a step above the lowest common denominator.



Both Delta and United have a higher overall CASM than us but of course make up for that with higher revenue as well. My wife is a typical business traveler both domestic and international. By far her main priority in booking flights is schedule and seat available. Anything else is simply icing on the cake. East coast to west coast delta has better scheduling of flights. She won't even look at United. She does fly on AA when I can convince her to (rarely!).







Do we? I'm really not 100% sure in that, we might in some cases but not in others. From what I've seen however is SWA has all of us beat. But this group would never consider some of the items in SWA's contract, such as being a "lance capt".







The more we make the stronger we become. Operating money losing routes just to say we are an international carrier probably isn't a great long term business plan.