😀 Boeing says it's all fixed and there should be no problems going forward - but I'm wary of a plane so reliant on such flammable batteries. When's the last time the batteries on any other Boeing type caught fire? I am not sold on the use of lithium ion batteries at 39,000 feet.
I've been saying pretty much the same thing for months.
Looks like we've been in complete agreement, as I've been saying it for a long time as well.
PHL-TLV is one of US' most profitable routes, with no competition, JFK and EWR have UA, DL and LY flying out of one or the other airports.
A second PHL-TLV has been discussed and was thought to be coming this year sometime with the additional five A330-200s coming into the fleet.
Even assuming that everything in your post is 100% accurate, what does that have to do with where new flights by new AA should be based?
No competition? Sure, no other airline flies PHL-TLV, but given the low numbers of PHL O&D passengers on that flight, on average, US faces lots of competition for most of the passengers on that flight, as connecting passengers generally have a choice. New AA has hubs where there are lots and lots of nonstop O&D passengers, and airlines generally thrive when they fly to/from places that passengers want to go.
No other airline besides US flies CLT-LON, but that's no reason to move a bunch of NYC-LON flights to Charlotte after the merger closes. Despite plenty of competition, Delta sees the importance of JFK-LON - it's the busiest European route from the USA. NYC is a gigantic international O&D market compared to PHL.
If PHL-TLV prints money like everyone says it does, then we'll see it continue post-merger. But pre-merger planes to begin a second daily flight from PHL are probably irrelevant now that new AA (post-merger US+AA) will have hubs at NYC, MIA, ORD and LAX. Like I posted earlier, pre-merger US had no other logical hub from which to fly a second flight to TLV. Post-merger, there are lots of places with a lot more traffic from which to fly to TLV (like MIA, NYC, BOS and others).