Originally Posted by
GO_CAT
LAX-SEA for $79 really shows the competition.
They have half a dozen aircraft that sit at JFK between 6am-5pm, everyday doing nothing. They could grow their base from JFK if they wanted to, obviously B6 would still kill them.
Alot of carriers out there are highly profitable at this time, even with the current fuel prices. Their cost base is clearly to high, they dont seem to be doing anything about it. These high fuel prices will be coming and going for foreseeable future, so what hope does VX have really?
VX is limited to 10 R/T slots daily at JFK. Enough to have a decent JFK to LAX/SFO presence; but impossible to add to.
You also forget that these other carriers enjoy the benefits of economies of scale; whereby adding/cutting service is only a marginal cost. For WN, for example, adding 5 R/T daily from say, SFO-BUR would be a minor deal when you run well over 3500 daily flights. For a carrier like VX, running roughly 100 flights a day, adding SFO-BUR(SNA) for example would be about 5% of capacity, a huge amount for any carrier. Plus, since a carrier like WN already has many established stations dotting the map, the station startup costs are already amortized; unlike VX, who has to start everything from scratch.