Originally Posted by
Dave Fitzgerald
I wouldn't hang your hat on the cargo flights and a small fraction of what the schedule used to look like. Remember, those are in lieu of the pax flights. The cargo flights will stop once pax flights resume in a more normal schedule. The cargo will go with the pax then. But....I don't think that will happen any time soon as this has turned into a political football. Europe not letting in US passengers, Chinese playing games with required testing, and restrictions only for non-Chinese airlines.
I'd "hang my hat on that" to some extent. It's not growth, but seems (hopefully) to be a surprise pocket of stability that bridges a gap in the absence of int'l pax flying to/from the US - which is its own trainwreck of an issue. If nothing else it's definitely helpful for our 787 pilot numbers and therefore overall numbers.
Amongst the many things that will probably begin to be "revealed" in a couple of days, I think that the initial baseline 30% plan may not have accounted for the relative success of cargo-only and other carriers pushing us to up our domestic game (relatively speaking), though on the flip side it also probably didn't account for FL, TX, AZ surges that are "the biggest and best" #somuchwinning