Love the attitude.

But I don't want to be the one flying the 7hr flights.

I think you're right.

Daniel said he couldn't develop a business case for the plane. He's gone now, but the math isn't gone.

We make more than 50% of our revenue on ancillary fees. We need to shuffle as many people on and off the planes as possible. Long flights mean you can only get 2 groups of pax on each plane per day. If you can do 4 or 5 legs per day you can make a lot more ancillary revenue.

I bet we convert our XLR orders to standard 321NEOs

Maybe you'll be proven right...but Daniel's math (and his plan to shake down customers for every penny) led to us losing customers and money in one of the most successful/profitable quarters the Big 3 have ever seen. I'd guess his math and ideas about the XLR won't be relevant by the time the orders are ready to deliver.

My gut feeling is that it was Barry's plan, and was implemented despite DS's objections leading eading to his departure fron F9 after being here almost a decade.

I wouldn't say I really liked DS, but I've had all three in gs at various times (BB, DS, and BL) and he's the only one I didn't feel was full of bs. In fact, I never felt he fit the norm as senior leadership for that reason.

AA and EI serve PHL-DUB. AA on a 787 and EI a 321Neo (with 16 lie flats up front). They are both in the OneWorld alliance so they feed each other nicely on either end with connections. F9 would have a difficult time siphoning off some of that traffic. PHL-SNN or Cork could work as long as AA doesn't go back into those cities. If F9 is going to do Europe from PHL, they could hit some of the other cities AA abandoned like EDI, MAN, TXL and they could also serve the secondary airoprts in Paris (Orly) and London (Stanstead or Gatwick). But with a 321, they really have to rely on passenger revenue whereas the legacies can load up the widebodies with cargo that is a cash cow. I'm not sure how much weight is left to allow for cargo revenue on a 321 if they also need to load it up with fuel and pax.

I have no doubt that he left because he was sick of working for upper management. I’m guessing that he was against this new operating philosophy, as it seems clear that the minute he was gone, it was full steam ahead on implementing it. This whole new path just reeks of desperation to me. It seems like a last-minute effort to fight back with our backs against the wall. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong.

It's very clear that the XLR play was predicated on merging with Spirit. That fell through and that's when DS+BB changed their tune. It only works if we had the scale to compete with the larger airlines and vie for the slots. The play would have been less F9-centric and probably more focused on codeshare with Wizz to create a transatlantic ULCC network. With the merger out of the question our growth will be too slow to take advantage of the XLRs therefore I agree with what others have said about converting options.

If the XLR's are cancelled, that would be a big disappointment. Alot of us got a big boost of motivation when those orders were announced, with the accompanying fanfare.

oh well, fool me once....or something like that....

isn't there a saying in aviation, never believe it until it happens.

This is my assumption as well. I don’t think crossing the Atlantic itself would have made much money but would have allowed our/wizz passengers the opportunity to cross in our network. Leave Mexico on Volaris and 8 stops later you’re in Hungary with Wizz all on one ticket!

I haven’t ruled them out and think it depends.

Is Europe’s travel market still going crazy next summer? If so I think the odds are higher.

Is the public still willing to pay more for premium? Perhaps we do something like JetBlue Mint and those aircraft are configured slightly differently. We may even see a desire to shift all aircraft to something akin to Spirits big front seats.

They are still 3 years out anyway so there no rush to decide just yet. Many things will change.