Kirby swinging.
 

He could be right. Personally I (as well as the rest of the pilot group) don’t think we’ll hire the 2160 new-hires they state they will and the MAXes will still keep coming whether it’s the 7s or 8s. I believe we’re supposed to get 100 of them in 2023.

Our network is stretched thin because we robbed jets from it to open up the 18 new cities during Covid and now there’s not enough frequency between our core cities which makes operational recovery harder from wx events.

Kirby’s right. UAL did invest more in their operation and earlier on then F9 or SWA and he’s also spot on when he says that it’s a years long fix to catch up (should our management ever get their heads out of their a$$es and admit to themselves that they actually need to catch up).

These days that thread title could be taken several ways.😁

Is it time to start the SWA/Frontier consolidation rumors?

Well, we can get planes, I doubt we will get the pilots unless there is some kind of goldilocks recession where the majors drastically cut hiring but we aren't very affected. But I think no matter what, we won't get gates at major airports and that will stop us. The more time goes by, the more I think letting B6 get NK was a huge mistake and we're kinda stuck now. I hear BB master plan is to hope for a recession and/or hope B6-NK doesn't happen. That doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling.

So his theory is that an airline can't grow because they canceled a few flights during a snow storm. In one city?

Not really sure that's a great metric to use to determine the future of Frontier and Southwest.

I'll give them credit for investing in their operation to be able to recover from storms, but the amount that a single storm effecting a single cities cancelation rate is correlated to future growth is questionable.

Southwest reputation damage from their meltdown won't be known for a long time. Frontiers ability to grow will depend on staffing and investing. United not canceling as many flights during a single event has nearly no bearing on our future.

I keep asking this as well - I don’t know how they plan to grow this airline to 2-3x what we are now with all the infrastructure constraints at most of the country’s biggest airports. Do we have some Grand plan of how to steal market share from the big 4? Is that what they think will happen as they begin to scale the ULCC model? I just don’t understand what the plan is when you are in a severely constrained industry where 4 companies control 80-85% of the market.

Seems that your missing the point. It's not that they can't grow because of this single storm as you seem to put it.

It's more that this response (week-long operational meltdown) is more symptomatic of the problems than it is the problem itself.

Underinvestment in IT, demise of the old SWA culture, blind commitment old tech (but with new engines!) and uncomfortable 737s, management sticking their head in the sand, etc., etc...

Personally, I think F9 has more room for operational tailwinds than SWA these days. Especially after the JBLU / Spirit merger.

Well, just as long as they don't let pilot attrition ruin things. You guys need a contract on par with Delta if management really wants to succeed. Not a penny less.

I agree if Spirit is removed from the equation it puts us in a nice position but I feel like we can’t trust management to really grow and take market share because well, that costs money.

You probably haven't been around long enough to see this happen here but F9 management does throw money at stuff occasionally and it gets better for a while. They haven't in a while though, which is a shame.