Originally Posted by
forgot to bid
Could we use our current fleet without buying a single new aircraft to increase flying up and down the west coast to the level sufficient enough to head off any AMR/Alaska merger? The 88 seems like it could fly up and down the coast just fine, Alaska did that for a long time. But we've got 320s, 737s M89s and CRJ900s that seem like they could do the job, couldn't they?
I believe we could, but we would need a hub out west. LAX is just a pilot base and not a hub. It feeds far destinations and has near zero local feed with DL equipment (other than from other hubs).
ACL - The AS agreement is not needed for feed to Asia and our few Int'l destinations. Skywest flies just about everywhere the AS feed comes from. I think that agreement was more to keep AS traffic close at hand and out of other carriers pockets without spending $$. Heck, we don't even serve some of these cities with a regional carrier. AA Eagle is our regional carrier out west! Skywest just serves SLC and, by the way, is the major DL code going west of SLC.
Now SEA is the new golden child of the west, not LAX. IMHO feeding SEA is way harder than SFO, LAX, SMF or any other number of cities. SEA is really far away from everything and the whole NW has a relatively low population density. If I were smart I would have Glen's job, but I'm not; however, from a layman's perspective, I would say the best deal for the west would be to feed LAX from El Paso to Phonix to SLC to SFO. Then run 757-300s or equivalent from SEA to LAX. But again, that's why my fictional airlines code is BK.
BD