It was a poor strategy from the beginning. "Killing it" is relativistic. You were never going to make the billions in profit going that way, you need that premium and business travel. That's like saying Susy's Lemonade Stand is killing it because she made 1000% profit, spent 10$ and made $100. While the supermarket down the street is not because they only made 10% profit for $1,000,000.

They continue to pay it down so someday it will cease to be such a drag on profits. That's why they always include a bullet point about liquidity in the earnings statements. The airline has been on bankruptcy watch for a long time. Management wishes Wall Street will stop thinking that and bid up the stock. Time will tell if that's a good strategy.

Absolutely. Basic economy was the answer to the ULCC model in the US and it's why they are having so much trouble now, their business model was successfully checkmated.

As you say, scale matters. Walmart has margins in the 2% range but when you do hundreds of billions in sales, small percentages add up to real money. We lag Delta and United on margins for two primary reasons, fewer premium seats to sell and debt service. Management has acknowledged this and is working on it but there's no quick fix.

As mentioned earlier it really sucks that Delta and United now have enough free cash flow that they can take aircraft deliveries without financing, that's going to make it much harder to catch them.

More specifically, it was only ONE MONTH of reduced MPG. None of this stopped pilots from picking up trips including Premium Pay trips.

For voting this in we got:
No furloughs
5% pay raises
Stricter limits on RJ flying
1st Class on all deadheads
Pay protection for all pilot displacements (still paid at higher payrate)
Early retirement option for all pilots with 20+ years
Health care of all pilots who took leaves

It was a huge win for the pilot group because just a few months after voting it in the company had to restore us to MPG because they started taking the PSP money.

Near the very top, or at least very close to the top, of the list for me personally why APA needs to go: The way they protected the QoL of senior pilots during covid vs the JOBS of junior pilots. Absolutely disgusting. The 2 clowns that were my reps are thankfully retired.

I was happy to see the DCA VP lose the last election. It mystied me how he got reelected in the last round after his famous comments and emails during that time period.

All that fuel being wasted while we wait at a gate for half an hour or more for someone to park the plane…they got bigger fish to fry than some single engine taxi savings!!!

APA has a very simple philosophy, things must be better for senior pilots and worse for junior ones. If something could possibly be construed as a win-win for the pilot group as a whole it must be modified to skew the benefits to the senior. Once one accepts this, then most of their behavior makes sense. (Following this logic, APA also has more age 67 agitators than all of ALPA combined)

On the other hand I would prefer to be furloughed for a time and return to these pay rates than keep my job at 50% as has happened in the past or worse take that cut, get furloughed anyway and have the cut still in effect when recalled. I hope that lesson from the not too distant past has been learned well.

Safe, customer focused, and economically sensible in that order.
While I agree, $100 wasted every flight is $100m in cash wasted a year. It's a seemingly small amount of money but scales to a large amount, especially when you consider that extra $100m in profit would add 10% to our yearly profit last year.

Also I don't think SET saves any money, really only in certain circumstances.

It's something of a drop in the bucket but it is ridiculous how many times I walk through a terminal and see an airplane halfway into the gate with all 3 running. I get your ****ed and DGAS but for pity's sake just shut one down. You're not teaching the company a lesson or accomplishing anything besides being unprofessional.

Furlough over permanent cuts.

But none of the COVID stuff contained permanent cuts. My regional, our LOA expired every 3 months and needing reupped. UAL had triggers when full contract provisions would come back, etc.

Only APA said, " Nah" to all that and said, " furlough away because I got furloughed as well". And the former DCA VC saying he was done fighting for the junior guy. And in an email to a person facing furlough basically said tough luck, I got furloughed too once, and it will make you a better person, etc.