Captain caveman wrote:
Let's look at some factual history regarding our industry in the past decade:
1) 911-All legacies furloughed. WN, AT, Alliegent, ATA, Frontier and Jetblue all expanded greatly... Frontier did furlough initially but then recalled all pretty quickly and expanded until high gas and credit dried up. These are all domestic carriers... they all expanded big time while worldwide footprint carriers furluoghed.
2) High gas-look to #1 above.
3) Credit market evaporates- look to #1 above.
4) SARS- hit all carriers that had exposure in Asia very badly, overnight.
5) Great Recession- DAL still hasn't hired (or recalled in years). UAL is just begining and so is Airways. AA still not hiring or recalling. Jetblue, WN and until they went away Airtran expanded.
Do I need to go on? I'm not saying that when things are stroking throughout the world that the legacies are unstoppable and finally a huge money making operation. But shut down part of the planet and they hurt. I pointed out 4 huge issues that were hugely impactful for the domestic airline and US economy that caused huge shrinkage to the legacies, but yet we saw a huge growth period for the domestics... so I disagree that we'd all be hosed.
I will restate my original thread... the legacies have a huge international risk that the LCC's don't have, as much... history proves that the legacies will shell out a minimum of 10% of thier list if things go bad... when your lists are 10,000+, it's a big furlough number...
At least at WN and B6, it's been proven that the rednecks still will fly to Disney, Bike week and the Daytona if the economy sucks... FACT!
Tail
PS- did you see the latest on the bird flu jumping countries???? Remember SARS???? or the previous Bird Flu????
http://www.france24.com/en/20130424-taiwan-confirms-first-h7n9-bird-flu-case-outside-china