"Having an advantage over Delta means nothing...Delta lost $466 million...yes it's less than AA's $1B Q1 performance"
Let's see, Delta pays their pilots 30% more than AA and their management team lost less than HALF what our management team did. Means nothing, huh? Then I guess is doesn't matter what we pay our people.
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"Because of the rising costs of labor, it often times nowadays makes sense to fly an RJ."
Rising cost of labor? Hummm . . . . Seems to me that for the pilot's, at least, that AA has been enjoying a 1996 contract compensation by slow-rolling the new contract talks for 2 years past it's end date. And, the 1997 AE ALPA contract is about the sweetest labor contract management could hope for.
As far as RJ's go, yes, it does, sometimes. And the CSM on an RJ is pretty high. Carty has always been able to fly as many RJs as he wants, but it was AA pilots that had to do the flying due to the scope provisions that Carty agreed to.
I will hand Carty one thing. He has abided by the 1996 contract (more or less) and not used the force majuere provisions abusively. Whether that's good will on his part or just on the advice of what's legally defendable, only he knows.
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"Add to that, the entire TWA 717 fleet, and if I recall correctly, there are plans to remove the 757 & 767 fleets of TWA soon if not already. As for their M80's, many of those have now replaced 757 sevice TWA once flew. STL hub capacity is down dramatically."
Yep, sure am glad we bought TWA and got all those great (dead) route authorities and incompatible aircraft.
717s - Great airplane. Much better than the acoustic torture chamber,
unsupportable white elephant F-100s that AA management bought. But,
unfortunately, GONE
767s - Incompatible engines. GONE
757s - Incompatible engines. Will expect they will be GONE as soon as BK
filed. They'd probably be gone now if the company could return them
to the leasors without Chapter 11.
MD80s - Require expensive modifications. Some already GONE. Many more to go
if BK filed.
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"To think that AA is now not profitable because of Don Carty simply shows you lack the understanding of this business. Did you realize that airlines have not made a cummulative profit since 1903 when Wilbur and Orville first flew? Did you know that once in the entire history of aviation has any major airline ever covered the cost of capital (that would be Southwest for one qtr...even they perform poorly compared to other industries)? This is important stuff...we're not a public utility. They are in business to make money. To do so requires doing the things above AND cutting capacity (which is happening), AND cutting people, and all sorts of things that AA has done to remove $2 billion in costs BEFORE they asked for labor cuts."
Soooo . . . then it doesn't make any difference who's at the controls of the corporation if it's pre-ordained that we're going to lose. Funny, jetBlue and Southwest are turning a profit. Again, sure am glad we bought all that capacity with TWA so we could CUT IT. As for the so-called $2 Billion in non-labor costs . . . . the company has already said most of that savings is in the out-years. Slashing employees and employee compensation is what is going to save right now. Even if all the pilots worked for FREE, we'd still be losing money.
Well, even after all that, you still haven't told me what the business plan is. A business plan isn't cutting capacity, cutting costs, and giving fat bonues to management. The first two, at least, are survival measures while your new business plan is being implemented.
A business plan is knowing who your customer is, what he/she's willing to pay, where they want to go, and what kind of amenities they want. So far, I haven't heard of a new plan from management, other than crossing fingers and hoping against hope that the a miracle happens and the economy comes roaring back with the high paying business customer. That ain't gonna happen. The jetBlue's, Southwest's, AirTran's, Frontier's, and ATA's are going to steal the lucrative routes from the majors with better service, and in the case of jetBlue, better aircraft and service. AA traditional competition model of deep-pocket competition is not going to work anymore because there aren't any more deep pockets.
Judging from the recent TA. I would guess that the general direction (I wouldn't call it a strategic plan, however) is to effectively eliminating scope, finish breaking the unions with legistation to outlaw the traditional right to self-help, and the migrate domestic flying to low compensation commuter style contracts.
Unfortunately, even with the recent draconian TA's at AA (as well as UAL), I just don't see how BK is anything but inevitable. AA CASM is still WAY high and will continue to be so. The economy is going to continue to be poor, business travel is going to continue to be poor and migrate to the jetBlues in ever increasing numbers.
For the reasons above, I remain pessimistic because AA management has not given me any reason to think otherwise.