Flopgut,
You hit the nail on the head. AA wants the passengers with money. AA has moved in and out of markets. They have increased service (and then usually reduced it when they could) to ensure a higher than average ticket prices with reduced competition. They have always talked about what they were doing for the passenger and how they were growing but really all they wanted was to squeeze competitors first then the pooring passenger out of flying.
Looking forward now....AA management is so giddy about ticket price increases sticking they are parking 27 airplanes the next 12 months (MD 80's I think) and bragging abougt how its good for the corporation because the reduced capacity will drive ticket prices sky high in "select" markets.
I'm going to name you the "History Professor" because you latch onto some of the most obscure and unrelated tidbits concerning Dallas airline history. You can tease SWA about "advantages" but AA has just as many. AA may have "earned" their dominant position but they did so while treating their employees like dirt and getting caught price fixing by the government. Not to mention their ruthless behavior concerning competition. AA made SWA look like a girl scout. Business, like life, is not fair and bad things happen to good people. It's just AA's model of operations is incredibly inefficient and they can't make a decent profit out of their huge revenue, unless they fix the playing field. Knowing that fact I would like to look to the future, not rehash old rivalries.
Heard a good one yesterday. AA may be the Evil Empire but SWA is the Borg.
The LCC model will assimilate all. More likely someone will "merge" with a LCC to take advantage of the profit it generates. This will happen when SWA gets into international flying.
Flopgut, I'm looking forward not back when I study history. Remember when the B-scales were all the rage? SWA dropped theirs after a brief period around 1990. Newhires thru year 3 at SWA were making 12K more than AA pilots. And SWA was still growing like gangbusters. I predict the same for the next 3 years.