Many airlines have shown a profit this quarter because they got a huge windfall from the feds that pushed net losses into net profits.
Excluding the $358MM federal payment and other special items, AA lost $357MM in Q2 2003. It ran about a 75% load factor.
DL reported $184MM net profit. Without the special items (the federal payment), DL lost $237MM for Q2. DL''s load factor was also about 75%.
CO reported $79MM in net profit - $111MM of which was from the federal payout. Its load factor was about 76.5%.
Of course, we don''t know what US will post or not. Time will tell.
The simple fact of the matter is that intra-east coast travel is still way down. Aviation Daily and several other industry pubs have stated so. Owing to security issues, delays, and whatnot, many passengers feel that taking a flight from LGA to BUF, or LGA to DCA is simply not worth the headache. Many of those passengers will not fly unless you priced the product to near zero. So, long-term, you''re going to have to come up with a different strategy.