Originally Posted by
Bluedriver
Those numbers are meaningless without any context. What happened to revenue? What happened to other costs, such as fuel cost per ASM?
As was said, pilots were all sure AA was a dead man walking because of debt. Yet they have recovered from COVID financially better than JB, F9 and NK.
United's debt is increasing because of an aggressive re-fleeting plan, which comes with many benefits, and an aggressive growth plan. The big 4 are doing so well because of scale and network relevance, it is not that much of a stretch to think that more scale and more network relevance might actually pay off for them, especially as all the smaller companies are floundering.
Agreed, but I’m not 100% in agreement with the AA recovery argument. The Debt-to-Equity ratio for B6 as of Dec 2023 was 3.15. The Debt-to-Equity ratio for AA is -13.12. Notice the negative sign in front of AA’s, that’s not exactly a better recovery than B6. Not saying your argument is wrong and they don’t have the capacity to service that debt, but I wouldn’t say their balance sheet is better. Remember capacity discipline and revenue affect all airlines, even the Big 4. Too much capacity, less revenue for all airlines to service debt, even the Big 4.