I hate to say it, and I absolutely do not mean to wish ill-will, however every non-AMR carrier knows AA's sheenanigans and attitude back when they were on top.

A lot of hungry vultures are circling the limping animal right now.....

 

Glad they didn't hire you to run an airline, I like my managers to do things that make money.

 

You are not making a logical comparison here though with this analogy.

There is not much difference with the overall experience with a 757 transatlantic vs. a 777. The seats are about the same (not at the moment with the lie-flats difference but that's temporary), same crews, same meals, same travel time, same reliability.

You cannot really make the same comparison between an A-319 and a CRJ-200 or EMB-145. It's night and day.

 

The point of my post wasn't to ridicule AMR's woes, but to point out the folly of flying a larger aircraft at a loss, simply to establish a market. That strategy has proven to be a failure.

 

Yeah, you don't want to do something stupid like put a 747-400 on LAX-HND and fly it with only 75 passengers on board! I'm glad our guys are smart enough NOT to do that!

Oh...wait.

 

you are talking about the airline business ?



make money ? lets just outsource all of mainline flying to Section-8 regionals. That would make money. So would paying 777 captains $18,000 a year. All would "make money".

How bout if your "manager" did that ?

 

I just checked a random date... next Tuesday, December 20. AA has 10 mainline flights from DFW to LGA, ZERO RJ's.

Do you remember when we tried to compete against AA in DFW with us running a mostly RJ hub? We got our heads handed to us.

Give the customer a choice between an RJ flown by the lowest bidder and a mainline aircraft actually operated by the airline selling them the ticket... and the savvy customer will choose mainline every time. NYC customers didn't just fall off the turnip truck. How long do you think it will take for them to figure out that Delta is a terrible option out of LGA and that our competitors (primarily AA) offer a much better product?

You'd think our management would learn... after all these years, outsourcing has proven to be an abysmal failure in terms of product quality and reliability, and mostly even in terms of supposed "cost savings." I'll bet that after you factor in the billions of dollars we've spent on RJ's and the number of customers we've run off with this bait and switch crap, outsourcing has cost us way more money than it has ever saved. But still, they are bound and determined to outsource as much of our flying as they can possibly get away with.

And, sadly, DALPA is all too cooperative in helping them to do this. Do you remember how much of a big deal DALPA made to us about supporting the slot swap? Ridiculous. And totally incompetent representation.

 

I'll just add that running RJs in a market that will support full sized jets, you leave money on the table.

For example, I did a bunch of DV8 DH between PHX and SLC this summer. Except for the first and last flights of the day (clean up flights with an MD-90 from SLC) everything else was oversold RJs. In comparison, USAir and Southwest were running FULL 737 and A-320s against us. So much for hub defense.........oh wait, the other guys understand that concept.

Ferd

 

I clearly remember the days of an RJ hub at DFW. That was what we tried after we had our butts kicked by AMR when we tried to operate a mainline hub there. I flew in and out of DFW for years on the DC9 and MD88. We could fill airplanes, but couldn't match their yields. They have a very loyal customer base in the DFW area.

If we had that loyal customer base in DFW, as well as all of the feed into DFW that American has, we could probably run mainline aircraft between there and New York, but apparently we don't.

I agree that a savvy customer generally prefers mainline aircraft to RJs. I know plenty of FFs, and they don't hesitate to tell me that. They've also told me, however, that they don't mind the bigger RJs, especially when they get upgraded.

I really dislike being the defender of RJs, but they do have a place in our system. How big a place? I have no idea. I'm not sure anybody on this board has the data to make that determination.

 

I'm sure DAL would down gauge it if they could, but I'm fairly certain(not positive) the aircraft size/capacity was part of the rights to use the slot so we HAVE to fly the big plane or we lose it completely.