1. That was not a flame. I restrained myself in the interest of forum decency. It was, I will admit, a sharp rebuttal.

2. I read all of your posts. Carefully.

3. You alleged that capacity utilization was an "overriding weakness" of Richard Anderson. To me, that qualifies as "over the top" -- which was my "flame" toward you. If you can toss around "overriding weakness" then surely I can toss out "over the top" in describing it.

4. You took a sample size of one flight, with very limited information about it, and decided it epitomized the "overriding weakness" of Richard Anderson. I stand by my earlier sentiments. I disagree with you, but no flame was intended.

5. Yes, it would be "hard to judge on this particular issue with just the information provided," but judge you did.

I just think that operating an airline of this scope is an enormously complex task, and to take one flight that happened to have only 48 people on it on a holiday weekend Saturday afternoon and generalize it to support your indictment of Richard Anderson for his "overriding weakness" in capacity utilization is a reach. Is calling it a "reach" also a flame?

Frankly, having flown on holidays before, I am glad they made some effort to maintain the schedule for those who did need to get somewhere on Saturday, even if it meant some losses on selective flights. Moreover, if every flight with a light load required an equipment substitution in order to prove that the managers are capable of appropriate capacity utilization, it would generally produce chaos. The realistic choice, given that there aren't a hundred unused planes sitting around at any moment, would be to simply cancel the flight rather than attempt an equipment substitution -- and we know how disruptive cancellations can be.