I'm sorry, but I won't apologize for management who wants to make a profit and return value to their shareholders and crewmembers. This is a business, after all.
It is easy to accuse us of cherry picking routes, but there is more to the story. First, many of our most profitable routes were already heavily flown by other airlines. By offering a great product at a reasonable price, we actually stimulated demand. Now people can afford to fly to Florida several times a season and get more for their time and money than they used to. Second, places like LGB were never considered "cherries" by other airlines. LGB had been all but abandoned several times before we created a market there. Third, many of our redeye destinations are not exactly "cherries," but by utilizing the aircraft in off times and providing non-stop service, we have again created demand.
Sure there are a lot of markets we have not tried to serve. We only have so many airplanes to work with and some cities simply can't support an A-320 with the kind of frequency that would be profitable. That's where the E-190 comes in. I'm sure we'll "cherry pick" those routes too. Why shouldn't we offer non-stop service to secondary markets when the customer wants it? Sounds like good business to me!
