AFAIK, blocking is a one-way street... You no longer see what the person writes, but they can still see what you post...
you got that one right, Kev... I still see EVERYTHING... because, even though some may choose to not read my posts, I will continue to respond based on the conversation.
But the real conversation gets to the heart of the issue which is that there have been AA employees and fans on this and other boards who, for years, have thought that AA could just quietly sit on the sidelines and have its strategic brain freezes and operational meltdowns and would return to the stage when AA was ready and just pick up where they left off.
Airline industry history is full of airlines that believed the same thing. The reason why the low fare carriers grew so rapidly post 9/11 is because the network/legacy airlines were PARALYZED yet the LFCs grew enormously and the tide as a whole has not turned back in the legacy carriers’ favor. But not all legacy airlines have suffered the same degree of competitive losses at the hands of LFCs… AA and US combined have closed more hubs and lost more of the local market to other carriers than all other legacy carriers before them combined.
The industry is now in the phase where some network/legacy carriers are turning their focus on gaining market share from other network carriers and are succeeding at doing so. RDU was a former AA hub. DL is now the dominant carrier at RDU in terms of local passengers and revenue. DL now has 90% of the seats at PIT and STL as the legacy carriers who previously hubbed there. DL is now mounting a hub operation at LGA, just yards away from AA’s former headquarters where DL now flies to nearly every market that every other carrier serves from LGA and, in the case of AA, has as many seats in the local market except to a couple of AA hubs. And in JFK-MIA at times during the past two years, DL has carried more local passengers than AA has; AA has carried more passengers between the two cities overall but funnels many to Latin America.
And DL is just one competitor – but it is the one most like AA and most capable of taking AA’s corporate revenues and high value customers – and DL is succeeding at doing that. B6 and Virgin are doing the same thing in other markets – and there is abundant evidence to show that they are succeeding.
AA’s customers didn’t care the reasons for AA’s operational problems but many did not stick around; AA cut over 7% of its domestic capacity in September and gave many of AA’s customers no choice but to find another ride. Some of those customers will never come back.
I’m sorry if that is news some here don’t want to hear but that has been the reality for the ten years that AA has floundered in restructuring. The rest of the industry is relatively stable in comparison and is more than capable of mounting a spirited assault on AA’s revenues.
Those who don’t want to hear that should probably find another place to participate in chats –such as quilting and crocheting sites.
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AA just reported its 3rd quarter financials and, even excluding special charges - the majority of which were related to employee severance, AA managed to post less than a 1% operating margin. Factor in those severance payments and AA operated at a loss. AA's reduction in costs were also identical to the small net operating profit they generated. Forty percent of AA's net operating profit came from a reduction in fuel costs.
AA's revenues were up less than one percent... all those above average RASM numbers mean little if capacity is pulled down almost as fast.
http://finance.yahoo...-120000924.html
but I'm sure the pay cuts and the layoffs that are coming will make the numbers work again.
Note that AMR has already dropped 3000 employees year over year.
