To be fair not all those were his failures. The aircraft parking was a decision from DS and Gate issue was a legal mistake. Austin was apa trying to flex on an issue because it was the only win they could get and in the end they spit in their own faces.

 

You really think 1 single day is responsible for 10%?

 

He was the CCO. It absolutely was his fault. He was in charge of the route structure he certainly had a say on whether or not to park airplanes.

I forgot about his "we don't need a good inflight product our route is the product."

As far as AUS. The company was violating the contract. Period. They were running podunk regional routes in order to maintain minimum gate usage. So his decision to hub AUS in the first place was.........a failure. Along with everything else he did.

 

Vasu was so bad at his job that he let an extinct profession (travel agents) destroy his career.

 

It was Seymour that parked the jets, and APA was in the right, but the law of unintended consequences has now allowed Delta to get their foot in the door in Austin, and in 20 years, we may regret that when AUS is a mega-hub for them.

 

I do agree that losing ground to any airline in Austin is a mistake. But realistically, it will be way more than 20 years before- or if- Austin becomes a mega-hub for any one. As it stands, the city of Austin’s use of imminent domain to take the south terminal away from Lonestar Airport Holdings- and the ensuing lawsuit- slowed expansion efforts

The Terminal B expansion project won’t be complete until around 2029/30. And that only adds 20 gates- bringing it to 54. Far from a mega-hub.

There is not a date to begin construction on a future Terminal C- which would be connected via tunnel. Even then, that’s only another 20 gates as proposed right now.

I would have loved to have Austin as a base.

 

I would have liked to see it as a base too, although quite impractical due to its distance from DFW. I also agree with your analysis.

DFW metro population 8.34M
ATL metro population 6.41M
AUS metro population 2.5M

Could it be a connection mega-hub like Charlotte? Probably but Delta already has one of those (a little farther than DFW but close enough) so it makes little sense to compete with themselves. Most likely it will just be a decent but not amazing city for O&D traffic.

Does that mean I'm happy conceding it to Delta? No, but we have more important battles to fight in the meantime.

Blaming the retreat on APA (for all their faults) is silly. AA management opted to violate the scope clause instead of negotiating. I would have been happy to grant them an RJ mini-hub for Delta's global scope and a 1 for 1 match of United's widebody fleet size.

 

Are you seriously arguing that APA should have ignored a Scope Violation? Really?

 

Did these layoffs spill over into the OCC/SOC? Reaching "Floyd," in Scheduling or MX is starting to sound a reality.
I can't believe this video is almost 20 years old...

https://youtu.be/Y6C8Z9aBa2Y?si=wL12cTT29DhFfgGr

F138-

 

The only big fail Vasu made was the corporate booking thing and the JFK gates, and they absolutely were a colossal screw up.

While he was a pompous dick at least he did listen, Parker blew me off but Vasu fixed the issue I brought to him about corporate bookings on other airlines (pre-covid, had nothing to do with the switch he made later)