Should Ual Think Over Ted?

Thanks Cosmo. I can assure all and any that I am not trying to obliquely pry around how the airlines keep their competative data on revenue. It just seemed however, after scanning some of the threads that this could be an extraordinarily difficult task to do and the complexity of the modeling to trace it would be staggering.
You summed it up well when you wrote "The key issue is how and to what extent United makes use of this data to maximize its profits (or minimize its losses), on both a per-flight or per-route basis as well as on an aggregate system-wide basis." This gets back to the classic introduction from mathematics that if one has a pound of flour, yeast, water, and the other basic ingredients does one make 5 loaves of bread and brew 2 liters of beer, or 3 liters of beer and bake 2 loaves of bread? Simple stuff initialy until the number of ingredients starts to grow and the possible number of "products" that can be made and sold enlarges.
Similarly, it seems that after awhile the planner at any airline of size would soon be swamped with trying to make reason of it. Falls under the old rubric 'Give me knowledge, not just information - not just data but the foresight on how to use it.'
Its lights out for me.
Cheers
 
I like the brand name "Ted". It's cool and unique. Neat marketing too to launch the thing.

But as to whether Ted will succeed or fail the answer is simple. As long as costs are lower than revenues it will succeed. Unfortunately, no "carrier within a carrier" strategy has ever been successful because the costs of the LCC carriers trump them. But if the costs get in line it will work, I just fear not enough has been done to get the costs down through utilization, etc.

But time will tell, maybe it will work.
 
I think we should not argue if Ted will be liked by F Class Customers or not. UA created Ted not to please the customers they have. They created Ted to attract a different type of customer (the one they lost to SW, WN etc. etc. etc.) They are telling Ted's customers that the milage they accumulate will aslo be good with all STAR Alliance partners. Fly this LCC (Ted) and get STAR treatment or fly one of the others and have limitations.
 
Just Plane Crazy:

You come the closest as to why United created TED. United is positioning itself for the onslaught of baby boomer retirements who want to travel to leisure markets and no longer need a first class. As more and more baby boomers retire, not all of them who want to travel can fit into Jet Blues seats at one time. On a retirees income, retirees are unwilling to pay the high prices that business travelers were used to paying.

The business traveler has limited his business travel due to business can now be conducted by video confrencing. That is cheaper than $2000 tickets. The business traveler is returning slowly back to air travel, but is unwilling to pay the high fares they used to pay. However, as long as air travel is threatened by terrorism and every time Homeland Security raises the alert level, it impacts air travel and businesses figure they have too much invested in their employees to jeopardize their safety by sending them on business trips. Hense the use of video confrencing.