737nCH11, AA191, & AOG-N-IT:
I find your sarcastic comments hiding from behind a PC interesting and quit telling about your personality.
Regardless, the Southwest entry into Philadelphia will have an effect, but the bigger issue is the enormous LCC domestic expansion.
LCC’s can reduce ticket prices because their costs are lower, across-the-board, thus depressing netowrk airline yields.
It's as simple as that and Econ 101.
Historically, network airlines have had a revenue advantage and that permitted companies to be profitable, but that has changed.
As Siegel told the Washington Aero Club yesterday, “The cause of the major carrier demise? Take your pick: new consumer access to competitive fare information via the internet, business traveler refusal or inability to pay business fares, overall economic downturn, lingering fear of terrorism, so-called ‘commoditization’ of air travel, stubborn fixed costs and uncontrollable cost increases and – my personal favorite, ‘myopic airline management’."
However, with their cost advantage, I agree with Siegel when he said “most of the cause, however, is the evolution of the low-cost airlines – from pesky upstarts a decade ago to worldbeating dragon-slayers that some say are destined to relegate the nation's airline networks to the dustbin of aviation history.â€
Chest thumping, bitching, and sarcastic comments will not change the fact that every network airline has a higher CASM than their LCC counterparts. Thus, to survive network airlines will have heed the wisdom of Charles Darwin. As Siegel noted yesterday in his speech, Darwin, who wrote in The Origin of Species said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change.â€
I do not like the reality of the situation any more than anybody else, but the CASM statistics speak for them self.
Regards,
Chip