Western US hub strategies for all carriers, including DL

[commavia]

"AA does not believe it needs to have as large of an operation in NYC - a more competitive market - because it can still focus on the top markets with more point to point service and leave their other hubs to serve smaller cities."

 

[WorldTraveler]

and despite your job in picking out that phrase, where does it say that AA will be profitable.

while AA has added ATL and CLE, can you list the other major/top markets from NYC that DL and UA serve but AA does not?

and also list the markets from LAX that AA does not serve but that other carriers do or with comparable frequency and compare to the two lists.

I can assure you that AA will have to add WAY more service and capacity than they will ever have gates available.

2 flights/day to ATL might look good on the route map but you only need to look at AA's performance on ATL-LGA to see the financial results of not having capacity that is on par with competitors.

AA will be a very distant #3 in the ATL-LAX market as well as ATL-LGA. They either have to get full in or won't make it in highly competitive markets - that is true in NYC or LAX.

 

[jcw]

translation - unless AA says it will be profitable on every single thing it is doing - you should assume their strategy is to lose the largest amount possible - see it took DL over a decade to be profitable in NYC - we know no one will remember that

 

[commavia]

translation - unless AA says it will be profitable on every single thing it is doing - you should assume their strategy is to lose the largest amount possible - see it took DL over a decade to be profitable in NYC - we know no one will remember that

 
Indeed.  Remarkable considering that, using this vaunted metric of "profitability," let's not forget that in the most recent quarter, AA generated a net profit margin that was five percentage points higher than Delta on essentially identical revenue.  Hmmm ...

 

[WorldTraveler]

yes, we know.

AA didn't account for taxes or pay over $300 million in profit sharing.

doing the right thing does not necessarily result in the highest profits.

and as you tout those net margins, be sure and remember that DL had a higher GROSS margin.

and there is nothing wrong with saying that AA will make a profit at some point in the future.

would you like to tell us when we can expect AA to be profitable across the Pacific - and how much their "investment" will total by that point?

 

[commavia]

Hahaha oh yeah that's right American Airlines Group - a publicly-traded corporation doing tens of billions of dollars in business annually - "didn't account for" a tax allowance not because it intentionally structured its bankruptcy and merger so as to preserve billions worth of loss carryforwards and DTAs ($10.6B at the federal level alone as of 12/31/13, to be exact) that reduce their tax liabilities into the future, but rather because it apparently wasn't - under penalty of imprisonment for senior officers required to personally certify financial results - "doing the right thing."  Right.
 
And here I was thinking we were only going to get one hysterical "quotable" today ...

 

[WorldTraveler]

oh, please.

AA didn't account for taxes because it doesn't have to at this point.

Nothing is wrong with that.

However, in your joy to tout that AA had a higher gross margin, you fail to accept that AA's tax rate is lower because they didn't account for taxes or pay profit sharing.

It is legal for them to do that... but DL and WN's financial results reflect those realities.

 

[jcw]

Actually you are factually incorrect - they did account for them - they had loss carryforwards etc that reduce the tax obligations - I'm sure DL never did that - I guess DL is not smart enough to understand how taxes work
 
but once again you chose the words and chose wrong
 
by saying they did not account for them you are saying they are performing an accounting fraud
 
what you should be saying is:
 
AA has had the advantage over DL because of BK creating loss carryforwards and favorable tax treatment as a result allowing them to show improved results - for example DL just wrote down a large portion of their 747 fleet and DL did the same - they reduced their tax burden by reducing their net income from the write offs - so it's great to see both carriers focused on minimizing their tax bills and maximizing profits at the expense of the US taxpayer

 

[eolesen]

AA loss carryforwards = bad

DL loss carryforwards (which it is still carrying) = good

AA pension funding liability = bad

DL pension underfunding liability = good


This reminds me more and more of my gate agent days, and having customers at ORD tell me it never snowed or rained on UA's side of the airport...

 

[commavia]

Actually you are factually incorrect - they did account for them - they had loss carryforwards etc that reduce the tax obligations

 
Precisely.  AA did account for them - just not in a way that would somehow make Delta look better by comparison at the moment, and therefore they "didn't account for them" at all.  Again - laughable.

 

[jcw]

additional translation:
 
 
I was having trouble proving to everyone how great DL is so I decided to change topics to taxes (WT before you say you never said that) read post #20 on this thread - we realize you can't keep up with all your postings - it's hard to remember all the fantasy statements you make - so we will help you - you know what the actual statement is or analogy we assume.
 
So let's talk tax policy for the rest of this thread

 

[topDawg]

well this thread went right to heck in a hurry. 

 

[WorldTraveler]

AA loss carryforwards = bad

DL loss carryforwards (which it is still carrying) = good

AA pension funding liability = bad

DL pension underfunding liability = good


This reminds me more and more of my gate agent days, and having customers at ORD tell me it never snowed or rained on UA's side of the airport...

no one said that AA and DL aren't doing the same thing - just at different periods of time.

DL just happens to be at the point where its tax treatment is different than AA's because DL has been profitable for enough time since BK that its tax benefits are diminishing.

No one said that AA is doing anything wrong or differently from what DL did several years ago.

But DL is further from the BK process and thus has to begin recording for taxes.


and btw all of you conveniently chose to ignore the $300M plus in profit sharing.

well this thread went right to heck in a hurry.

from a bunch of AA fankids who want to squash anything that might show that AA's west coast strategy isn't going to compare to DL or UA's, yes.

 

[jcw]

Translation - we are not moving from Tax avoidance to profit sharing

 

[Kev3188]

Godammit...


Smdh.