BYE BYE

[jrpilot]

On late Tuesday  ATA filed for Chapter 11..just adding to the U.S. airlines crumbling :-/..whose next?

[Nexus]

Who's next?

try USair...if they haven't filed  already....

[Craig.]

ATA are going no where. Chpt 11 means bankruptcy protection, it gives the airline a chance to restructure its company into a profit making airline, without having to worry about the debt collectors for a while. ATA like most airlines will pull through it. United has been in Chapter 11 for god knows how long now, and hopefully will be out soon. USair, well i dont know about them, its sad but at least one, maybe 2 of the major carriers has to go. USair will prob be the first. Delta are next for chpt 11 but not for a while as they just secured cuts from the pilots and $1bil in funding.  

[jrpilot]

Seems as though the LCC airlines are the ones who are still making the profit...which makes sense..cheap tickets=more passengers...so I wonder why UAL and AA have not looked into doing this.

[Craig.]

because they cant afford to. For instance, at roughly current fees delta needs an 86% load factor to break even

[Nexus]

Junior, SAS tried to catch on with the LCC trend in Europe (Or Sweden I should say) with their subsidiary airline Snowflake.

But alas, it did not work, so SAS folded Snowflake along with millions of dollars wasted so SAS are very well aware that competing with the LCC's on the same conditions are pretty much useless.
The SAS organisation is just not designed to be a LCC.
Their crew earn too much, they have too many aircrafts, and they have far too many on the payroll that works on the ground. Not really a slim organisation eh
They tried to be a low price company, but they were not a low cost company, so income and expenses did not really even up

And in the U.K, didn't Easyjet  actually BUY the LCC Go!, that was founded by British Airways...

So the major players usually stays out of the LCC business. The competition there is just fierce and not many comes out of it alive

[Craig.]

yes easyjet bought go

[Pinchaser...]

i heard America West was looking into buying ATA....probably won't happen though because America West often runs into financial problems  ::)

[OTTOL]

[quote]i heard America West was looking into buying ATA....probably won't happen though because America West often runs into financial problems

[beefhole]

I live in Philadelphia, where something like 75% of all commercial traffic flying into Philadelphia International is USAir.  Thus, the service of other airlines sucks, and USAir has no incentive to up their standards either.  A big airline going down is sometimes a good thing for the passenger, of course not for the pilots. It can also be good for the industry as a whole, when an airline is no longer dominating certain hubs competition goes up and you recieve better service becasue of it.