Opportunities Ahead For American Airlines

[AdAstraPerAspera]

I appreciate how the author points out the opportunities in Chicago as one of the largest American business centers.

 

[700UW]

This is the AA aboard

 

[Zom JFK]

what does all that mean to the employees?    let me help you out........nothing!!!!!
they still want concessions 

I have one that can see!

 

[WorldTraveler]

I appreciate how the author points out the opportunities in Chicago as one of the largest American business centers.

I do too... since it is UAs home and also WN's largest hub and a major int'l destination for dozens of global carriers, nothing AA wants to do will come without a whole lot of people having an interest.

still, it would be great to see AA grow at ORD.

given that the ORD hub for both AA and UA have less than 100 seats/departure which is one of the lowest for any of the large US hubs, there is a lot of opportunity to upgauge including to bring flights back to mainline for both AA and UA

 

[Bob Owens]

Instead how about you tell us what you think DL's issues are and we can debate whether they are accurate or not.

or perhaps you can challenge DL's own words that it is the best run US airline right now and its market cap and operational performance demonstrates it.

And Parker himself has acknowledged that AA is not the best airline but is still working toward that goal.

Parker didn't say Delta was the best. 

 

[WorldTraveler]

I didn't say he did.

He just said that AA wasn't.

 

[jcw]

Exactly - it's a big difference in how the airlines are run - one airline thinks it's perfect and can do no wrong (it and the forum PR department can't list one thing it needs to improve) - the other airline is self critical and works to address its self indentified issues out in the open. There are many companies who lose their way by thinking they are invisible to the competition

In case you are confused - GM, Chrysler, Blackberry etc

 

[jcw]

Not really - folks on here all the time talk about the issues - there is only one poster who can't point out a single issue with their love affair

 

[vsi0]

Why oh why does anyone continue to engage WT? 

 

[WorldTraveler]

probably because they can't accept that Parker said that AA is not the best airline while DL execs did say that about their airline.

They can argue with me but the quotes come from the top of both airlines.

AA has opportunities. I have never denied that. some people have gotten hung up on a dozen other things.

 

[Kev3188]

Of the points brought up in the cited article, Cuba is most interesting to me. I'm curious to see if HAV actually "cannibalizes" other LatAm or Caribbean traffic, and if so, from where. Also, given the love/hate relationship cuban immigrants have with their homeland, I would like to see how any O&D vs. Connecting traffic plays out.

 

[WorldTraveler]

the theory is that Cuba represents a huge untapped demand for tourism... and yet the infrastructure is well behind other Caribbean locations. So the chances are high that Cuban tourism will just cannibalize other destinations.

Given that so many Cubans live in S. Florida and it is presumed that AA will capture that traffic, the family travel component might be valuable but there have been forms of that going on for several years so I'm not sure there is the huge amount of family travel that some think.

Also, because Cuba is so close, it might actually be fairly inefficient to operate flights that take twice as long on the ground as they do in the air. Honestly, there might be more of a viable market for a high speed ferry service than for huge amounts of air travel from MIA.

 

[FWAAA]

Also, because Cuba is so close, it might actually be fairly inefficient to operate flights that take twice as long on the ground as they do in the air. Honestly, there might be more of a viable market for a high speed ferry service than for huge amounts of air travel from MIA.

Maybe so, but if you were correct, then why are there so many flights from MIA to FPO and NAS? HAV is twice as far as FPO and 50 miles farther than NAS.

High speed ferries are great for 50-100 miles, but at 235 miles between MIA and HAV, that would be a half-day journey. That's why jet airplanes became so popular. The Lake Michigan high speed ferry takes 2.5 hours between Milwaukee and Muskegon, Michigan, and that's just 85 miles across the lake.

I agree that long-term, an increase in Cuban tourism would come at the cost of travel to other Caribbean islands. However, MIA isn't the only gateway to the Bahamas, so I would expect that ATL and CLT and some other hubs (JFK, PHL and IAD) might also feature flights to Cuba once relations are completely normalized and tourism infrastructure in Cuba catches up with the 21st Century.

 

[WorldTraveler]

Ferries like trains often leave from closer to the city center and do not involve the lengthy check-in and security process that airlines require.... that is why non-air forms of travel work on shorter sectors.

and you are right that high speed ferries do not exist in the US to any great degree but they do in other countries and have the potential to be a significant alternative to air transportation.

but the notion that a short-haul air shuttle will be wildly profitable has to be weighed against the much higher costs of providing short haul travel and the inefficiencies of such types of service.

Also, it is certain that every airline will be aggressively competing for the right to serve Cuba if/when it becomes available on scheduled airlines and it is not a given that AA will be the only airline that could or would make MIA-Cuba work given the size of the local market. Although Cubans are heavily concentrated in S. Florida, there is demand all over the US and other hubs are very viable for other regions of the country. Cuban airlines will be a part of providing the service as well.