Wall Street airline analysts are unanimous in advising against the sale of shares in AMR Corp., Continental Airlines and Southwest Airlines Co., according to Bloomberg data.
"WHY?"
Who makes the decisions? It is not the non-management type that dictates where the income is spent.
Its like blaming the slave for the fall of ROME.
For your next home lesson sit down and think about it.
Actually if you've ever read Gibbons, the freed slaves DO get a good part of the blame for the fall of the Republic--they became citizens after they were emancipated and according to Gibbon weren't assimilated enough into Roman society and helped bring mob rule to the city of the Republic, which Julius Caesar and others harnessed to their benefit. I think Gibbons is wrong by the way, but its one theory. The Empire of course fell (according to Gibbons again) because of Christianity. Rome didn't fall in a day, and wasn't built in a day, but there's plenty of blame to go around for both!
To get back on topic, when you read airline reports alot of the cost per ASM numbers are adjusted to account for stage length, the average distance of a flight, because it makes comparisons fairer. The longer your stage lengths, the lower your costs per ASM, because scooting a plane through the air is very low cost. So comparing Cathay Pacific to Southwest makes Cathay look better than it should. American is a penny higher in labor cost per ASM, but if all WN flights were the average of Americans, the comparison would be significantly worse. Even so it is an unfair comparison because Southwest is not a hub and spoker, which as was said earlier in the thread is by nature more people intensive.
