gloopy

Didn't Bethune say "you're only as smart as your dumbest competitor"?

We may be in just the right bracket/fishbowl to leave the middle seats open while trying to please the yield model at all costs. But that won't be sustainable in the long run. Obviously middle seats will be back on the market at some point (probably sooner than later). But hopefully the stratedgy isn't to let the (always ruthless and often irrational) competition have our route map as a menu to poach whatever they want, whenever they want, counting on DL to retreat to preserve the almighty yield. That's guaranteed to backfire long term.

Sometimes you have to spend money to make money. If that means bleeding out a ruthless competitor for a while by being even more ruthless than so be it. DL can't ignore the LCC/ULCC poachers who think they can grow at will just to preserve short term yield premiums trying to get back to multibillion dollar burnbacks for EPS paydays. Lay flat transcons and any and all long haul international should be considered massive threats that justify total competitive warfare to defeat. Even low yield leisure out of dense markets should always be something to compete for because no one can afford to surrender a customer base that massive.

Letting irrational competitors metastasize long term while chasing myopic quarterly pumps will ultimately be more expensive than dealing with it earlier. Although sometimes it does makes strategic sense to let them walk fully into the choke point ambush by letting them add overhead and exposure for a while in order to cause them asymmetrical pain at the best possible time. It appeared that was the stratedgy of the legacies before all this happened and that needs to continue.

The nearly decade long detente of industry wide "capacity dicipline" was starting to come to an end before the latest macro event hit. Once recovery and return to "normal" really starts happening, all the shruken legacies should expect, and should provide, absolutely no quarter.