Originally Posted by
AAExPlat
Wait...UA is expanding capacity? Care to share the numbers to support this claim?
This is what I have been saying for months. UA is losing the frequent business traveler. And the numbers are consistently underlining this trend. Business travelers don't want upgrades to be sold out from underneath them to kettles, they don't want to have to babysit reservations daily, and they want the automation the airline has in place to work flawlessly enough so they can have confidence in what they will get in return for their airfare. And contrary to the assertion of a select few on this board, UA has been failing in all these categories, and it is not getting any better.
I personally expect the Q2 numbers on UA's side to be ugly. And while that will not be enough to oust Jeff and his team and to reverse some of the poor decisions that have been made to date, I do think it will move the needle towards both ends incrementally.
my back of an envelope calculation says that they lost about $400M in revenue in Q2 over what it would have been
had they matched the competitors in revenue growth. I don't know how much the extra staffing due to SHARES will effect things.
This said, Q2 will be chocked up to "transition costs", merger costs, etc. I think that Q3 will be more telling, and will either prove management's approach to have been correct, or not.