Still pretending to speak authoritatively about regional financial performance when we all know that numbers reported by DOT are highly susceptible to the individual financial and accounting assumptions and methodologies of individual airlines, and thus not apples-to-apples comparable between carriers.
Nonetheless, this is yet another crystal clear example of how the competitive landscape has been transformed in just a matter of months. AA, now flush with cash and able to leverage a far larger and stronger network, is making a long-term investment in growth and a meaningful network to the one major world region (that being Asia/Pacific) where it does not presently have a competitive presence. Delta has been steadily dismantling its NRT hub in the last few years because of that hub's declining competitiveness - as many of us clearly saw years ago, and as Delta's own management has now acknowledged - and instead shifting emphasis to SEA. And at the same time, AA has not been standing still - to the point that today AA (together with its JV partner JAL) have dramatically closed the gap relative to Delta in the nonstop U.S.-Asia market. While neither carrier will ever be a peer of United across the Pacific, AA has dramatically improved its standing and, subject to regulatory approval, by next summer AA alone will be operating up to 11 nonstop flights per day from three U.S. gateways to all five of the major commercial and cultural capitals of Northeast Asia (Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong), and will enjoy - through its metal-neutral JV with JAL - far more extensive and convenient access to more places beyond Japan in East and Southeast Asia than Delta can presently reach.
Another reminder of how the "new AA" has - in just a matter of months - made life far more complicated for Delta, and thus why Baghdad Bob is not happy about it.