Originally Posted by
fastair
The yield comparisons are worthless, the RASM ones have value. Hige yield and low load factor shows great yield but not great RASM, and it's about revenue, not revenue per filled seat. Flying a bunch of empty seats hurts not yield, but hurts RASM. I'm sure if UA (or any airline) wanted to sell no lower fare buckets and not match any slaes, their yields would rule the industry, but their revenue would trail. You can't pay your bulls on yeld per flown seat when you don't fill the seats. Stick to RASM as it makes for a useful comparison of revenue.
If yield was a "worthless" metric as you assert, then airlines wouldn't bother calculating it and analysts wouldn't look at it.
Unit revenue (PRASM) is useful, and so is yield. In the second quarter, UA had a slightly higher mainline load factor (filled slightly more more seats) but at substantially lower average fares than AA, and thus, its mainline unit revenue again trailed AA's mainline unit revenue. For the most part, ever since March 3, 2012, UA has had lower average fares than AA and has reported lower mainline unit revenue than AA.
You're free to look at any metric you want. I prefer to look at all of them, as no single metric tells the whole story.
Originally Posted by
fly18725
I was looking at consolidated yields, which I think are more representative of the health of the overall network. US' yields for 2Q13 were 17.00, while AA's was 15.87.
If the consolidated yield is "more representative of the health of the overall network" (I disagree with that assertion), then UA's overall network is in pretty poor health, as its consolidated yield for the second quarter was a paltry 16.18 cents compared to US' 17.00 cents.
Originally Posted by
fly18725
I think analysts are smart enough to quickly grasp the strategy of better aligning benefits with a customer's economic contribution.
If they are, then I'll bet that they're smart enough to recognize the correlation between the implementation of that strategy by Smisek & Co. and the relatively poor mainline yields and unit revenues at UA ever since. AA has yet to embark on that dubious "strategy" and in 2012 (and thus far in 2013), its mainline yields and unit revenue have outperformed the same measurements at UA. I'm not smart enough to know if there's any causal link, but you'd have to turn a blind eye to not see the correlation.