Really? Are we not on track to have the best NET income year on record? Maybe I missed something. I hope you are not falling for all that "economic income" talk coming out of the GO. Wouldn't it be convenient for the company if most of the pilots believe we are not making money while we are putting massive amounts of cash in the bank? I don't want to get into an argument here, but I keep hearing guys say things like we wouldn't have made money without the hedges, etc. First of all without a proper risk management program in place, many companies would not make money. It is simply good business. Without this in place, we would be running the airline differently and we may or may not have been as successful. There is no way to know this. I believe that our business model is built around our current and projected costs. We know what our fuel costs are and what they will be in the next few years. This is what we base our plans on. These costs are somewhat insulated from the ups and downs in the oil market because of our excellent risk management program. It's true that over time our cost of fuel will rise, but not nearly as much as our competition. The real risk that increasing energy cost has to us is the publics ability to afford to go to Disneyland. At some point the economy will not be able to withstand the high energy costs and will contract. I believe this is why our management team has chosen to slow our growth and will do so again if necessary. It doesn't mean we are not doing well, just that they are doing a good job looking ahead and preparing for a possible downturn in the economic situation. Very safe and in my opinion, very smart. This is a marathon and not a sprint. I feel very confident in this management teams ability to get us through the coming tough times.
For me, there is no better place to be. My experience has been nothing but positive. Like someone else said, sitting in the right seat here is not that bad of a deal.
