Dear readers,
I’m monitoring slippage in demand around Washington, D.C. and possibly from Canada to the United States, and wondering if we soon may see weakness elsewhere. I also have thoughts (after my trip on Frontier) about why U.S. ULCCs are in such trouble. And I’ll touch again on Southwest’s recent layoffs, which I continue to think won’t hurt the airline as much as conventional wisdom expects. I’ll warn you: even by my standards, today’s post is heavy on negativity.
But it’s not all gloom and doom. I’ll share with you some thoughts on why I think network planners are the quirkiest, most intense and most competitive people in the airline industry. And I’ll relay a promise that I made to a very senior airline executive about how I’ll hold Scott Kirby accountable if his thesis about the airline industry ends up being wrong.
Let's get into it.