Originally Posted by
Happyflyer
Why is this being billed as a negative. They parked 3 fleet types. Have the 737 sims just been sitting idle? They announced code shares with Alaska and Jet Blue and everyone was worried they were outsourcing AA jobs. Now AA has more demand than they can accommodate.
Are JetBlue and Alaska booking more emplanements causing supply shortages? Did AA revenue mgmt intentionally build a more robust schedule for June get scared and drop prices? Has AA market share against Delta and United gone up 3% before 1% cancelations?
Seems very reasonable they held off on training the junior pilots because it was unclear if they would be needed past Cares3 expiring.
Did Max coming back add to sim demand?
Seems like a misplaced frustration to say AA just sat on its rear end and is now kicking the cash out the door because it’s too difficult to pick it up.
Why is it being billed as negative? Because they said they saw the way to turn this black swan event into a win. They laid out how they planned to capitalize on opportunities on the back side of the pandemic. They then turned around and did the exact opposite of the plan they very publicly laid out. How can you bill that as anything but negative?
Excess bookings due to cheaper airfare than the market demands is a failure, considering there is an entire section of our company devoted to analyzing ticket prices. (but even for that point, you'd have to disregard that airfare was rising for the summer starting months ago). Why are we the only ones in the news for mass cancellations - could it be because we were the only ones who were not prepared? Could being the only major who furloughed play a part?
Just to be clear, you're saying that AA was right in holding off on training pilots so they wouldn't waste money... just in case they had to be the only major airline to furlough ~again~ during the recovery portion of the pandemic? Even in light of the fact that we are cancelling dozens of flights daily in excess of a month due to lack of pilots - even though we have hundreds of pilots who have been sitting home for 8 months on the government's dime?
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you're defending their actions even though they went the opposite direction of industry peers. We are now suffering due to those decisions, while our peers are now. I guess I'm just interested in how you can possibly see any positives here