AA reports healthy profit

[MAH4546]

AA would easily be able to serve South Africa with its current fleet by routing the return flight from JNB via Cape Town. 

 

[Tinkerbell]

again, why can't YOU engage in a business-focused discussion of the issues without throwing insults? your childishness and inability to discuss what is involved in serving a potential market which was raised during the conference call is why threads like this that could be interesting go nowhere.

MIA is an ideal gateway to Africa.

AA might well be able to make MIA-JNB work but I doubt if the economics are there if they have to wait for 18 months to buy brand new 77Ls and then only have a couple of aircraft in the fleet.

There might be a few used 77Ls available but, given AA's displeasure with buying used aircraft, it is doubtful they would pursue that option.

given that AA genuinely needs to find longhaul routes that use its current assets and personnel, I'm not sure that looking at opportunities that involve new aircraft (to AA anyway) is the highest priority for Parker and co.

 
 
Your right Mia would be perfect gate way for a Rout to Africa and only makes sense BUT BIG BUT MIA cant move airplanes!!!
Hell they cant fix them either. they sit for DAYS!
 
Its Not only a compleet failure of Manegment but of the Union as well. As far as equipment goes we had reliable long haul planes once.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8hQ4eaohzQ
 
I wanted to fix things once
 
I was wrong tho those Pensions payments were killing the Bonuses to undeserving CEO's & Mngmnt
Dont care who you are NO ONE IS WORTH AS MUCH AS THEY STEAL!

 

[WorldTraveler]

thanks for your perspective,

 

[kirkpatrick]

WT, just for trivia's sake, Maine is actually closer to Africa than Florida.  BGR-JNB is 7794 miles, MIA-JNB 8061.  BOS-JNB is 7857.  I'm not suggesting we fly these routes, but it might help in a game of Trivial Pursuits.
 
MK

 

[eolesen]

Why all the fascination with flying to South Africa from MIA?... In the larger scheme of things, it's a fairly small market.

The entire US-South Africa market looks to be about 25,000 pax per month (that's 833 daily). Nonstops from JFK and ATL soak up about 41% of the demand (including that which is connecting at ATL and JFK), and the rest is fairly well covered by connections over LHR and AMS.

Fun fact for the day... more people connect over LHR to get from the US to ZA than over JFK.

ATL: 25%
LHR: 20%
JFK: 16%
AMS: 12%
DKR: 11%
DXB: 4%

If there's room for another nonstop, I'm not seeing it in the data.

More importantly, though, what does any of this have to do with AA's 1Q earnings?...

 

[WorldTraveler]

ATL is actually one of the longer gateways from the US east coast to S. Africa - but it is the only one with continuous year round unrestricted service to JNB.

The data clearly shows that DL carries a large part of the traffic because they have have the only nonstops in both directions.

It doesn't mean that the market could support another market and you are right on that.

But the same could be said about a lot of markets, including Japan where the market is shrinking and the value of flying their is getting lowered even for the carriers that do fly there.

So where are the big growth markets that AA can tap into?

It is absolutely relevant to talk about how AA will deploy its resources and where it can make money. I"m not sure we will get to real answers but AA is clearly in need of being a much larger global airline than they are now.

 

[eolesen]

Disagree that being a larger global airline is a necessity.

There's something to be said for having consistent healthy margins, and less exposure to global instability, especially if you have true partners that can extend that reach with less risk. Its a formula that has served Alaska and Southwest quite well.

 

[Tinkerbell]

Disagree that being a larger global airline is a necessity.

There's something to be said for having consistent healthy margins, and less exposure to global instability, especially if you have true partners that can extend that reach with less risk. Its a formula that has served Alaska and Southwest quite well.

I Have to agree with you

Larger does not mean better on contrary bigger sucks big time,
What the heck why have any diffrent airlines at all? OR why not just have 3 ticket counters period.?
 
One for the Super rich that wipes peoples ass for them in the Lav & One for the so called middle class, ( that way any one worth less than a trillion has an airline too and south west for the every day working people.
 
Seriously why have more than three airlines? all 3 serve the same markets just diffrent class of people.
 
heck with it just have one aairline and two diffrent classes of people the super rich and well you know
 
Seriously its gonna come down to that just look at American Politics

 

[WorldTraveler]

Disagree that being a larger global airline is a necessity.

There's something to be said for having consistent healthy margins, and less exposure to global instability, especially if you have true partners that can extend that reach with less risk. Its a formula that has served Alaska and Southwest quite well.

that is EXACTLY the argument that AMR's creditors and US mgmt. made for justification of the merger.

They HAD to compete with DL and UA on a global basis.

And the growth of the industry has absolutely been in the int'l arena.

A less than stellar FIRST quarter in int'l is hardly a reason to say that int'l doesn't matter.

AA said that the loss of Star hurt their TATL revenues and they added too much to the Pacific.

DL said that the yen devaluation still hurts its Japan operations.

UA said that increased competition in China is hurting UA where it has been the leader among US airlines.

None of those are reasons to say that int'l doesn't matter.

 

[Tinkerbell]

The International routes have always been the cream of the crop for any airline and they are always BOOM & BUST TOO
Airline mangment always drools over international routes but the truth of the matter is in most casses the costs to build the relationships nesccary for the route is often times more expensive than its worth when all said and done.
AA has pissed away good planes and routes and has been blocked from route purchasses by pissing off the wrong people repeatedly.
 
There is a lot to be said about Airlines being ran by Airline people and not Bean counters.
How many industries are run by Familys? where sons and daughters are moved up instead of bringing others in?
There somthing to be said about a person that was raised to be instead of hired to be.
 
  Family knows the score