I made absolutely no incorrect statements. You are correct that AA did not pull out right away but did restructure their service out of DAL after Legend failed (reducing the Fokker routes and adding back AUS...which they removed to enable them to plow under Legend with more capacity). Besides...to pull out the day after Legend crumbled would have been a blatant anticompetitive action. To wait a few months made the gullible or ignorant not question their motives. They did the same to JI out of RDU. AA added tremendous capacity to JI's business routes in PHL, BOS, LGA, BDL, and even CMH and a few others. While they still have LGA and BOS service, they cut out PHL and CMH and have only one BDL. I don't care if they are not as good of routes as LGA/BOS...the point is that AA has, several times, flooded routes that they do not intend to maintain long-term just to eliminate competition.
And fact is that AA DID make statements when adding the Fokker flights on Legend markets that they were excited to serve their important biz pax out of DAL and that they have listened to the needs of their pax. Their stance, however, changed after legend and the reduced and then eliminated service. 9/11 was only a convenient excuse to finalize the pull down. I would love to have access to the press releases from 2000/2001 but have not been able to find them but I can re-assure you that AMR DID make these statements.
And I never said that all carriers expressed that this was a good market...only AA in an attempt to disguise their blatant anti-competitive tactics. Apparently you were one of the ones that was fooled.
Hey, there's no foolin' me.
Sorry - of course you said no incorrect statements - nor did I accuse you of same. But you left out the fact that AA continued the DAL flights for about another six months after Legend's shutdown.
I don't see how AA's actions at DAL directed at Legend were "anti-competitive tactics."
Legend's business model depended on siphoning off some of AA's highest yielding DFW pax, and AA responded. The reality is that Legend didn't have to make a profit in order to harm AA. If AA lost enough of those higher yielding pax, then AA's DFW profits could be jeopardized even if Legend couldn't make profits at DAL with those customers.
Who cares what AA's press releases said about DAL service? I concede that AA did say what you claim. but who cares?
Of course AA was going to paint DAL Executive Class service in a favorable light. Would you expect them to say "We think DAL service with 56 F seats on a full-size airplane makes no sense whatsoever but if we don't go crush Legend, our fortress hub profits at DFW may be in jeopardy"??
Of course not.
September 11 was a "convenient excuse"? Huh? AA pulled down about 20% of its capacity when service resumed three days later. A rational company would cut its least profitable (or biggest-losses) service as part of that 20%. That DAL service was included in that drawdown tells me that it wasn't a good idea. To compare, there were plenty of routes where AA didn't cut service at all or cut only one or two daily departures in high density markets.
AA continued its DAL service for those six months to diffuse criticism? My conspiracy theory detector is ringing.
If AA thought that 56 seat DAL service could be a profitable part of its network, it would have started it many, many moons ago. It wouldn't have waited for Legend. In the unlikely event that DAL service proved to be a good idea (like if AA's 56 seat planes were full at high fares and DFW's yields were not harmed), then AA could have continued its Executive Class Service.
But AA didn't continue it. Tells me that it wasn't all that profitable. Anti-competitive? "Flooded routes"? Courts have ruled again and again that there's really no such thing as predatory pricing - even in cases involving AA. If what AA did to Legend amounted to anticompetitive predatory pricing, then wouldn't Legend (or the Department of Justice) sued AA for the conduct? Maybe they read the Vanguard opinions and agreed with me (and the courts): Responding to competitors isn't illegal. It's not predatory. It is not anticompetitive.
