Originally Posted by
REF 5
Capacity and fleet are two different things. You can add asm's or cut asm's without affecting the fleet(like red eyes). You can take on airplanes and retire one for one. By the way, airlines have already cut capacity for the third and fourth quarter. Airlines have already seen improvement in RASM. So yes, you can shrink into profitability, as long as the rest of the industry shrinks with you. Growing your way out of a cost problem, especially burning cash(as they did last quarter) with terrible margins is a bad economic set up.
Neither of you are wrong. Even if Boeing gets back to full production (they won't), we will take airplanes to refresh the fleet first. The 700s are all nearing the end of their life, and as you get an orphan fleet, they become a ball and chain on the operation and costs. We took a lot of our 800s as leases. We are going to be flat to negative on our fleet numbers for the foreseeable future. Once Boeing gets right with the Lord, that will change in a hurry, but I don't expect that process to be swift or easy.
The big push for the next couple of years is going to be RASM and costs. This airline has a lot of work to do in both departments.