Originally Posted by
DWFI
No I am not.
But there is a big difference between the two.
(a) SFO-EWR was a monopoly for UA+CO combined. VX made it not a monopoly. UA wanted to drive VX out, bad. SFO-Islands is nowhere near a monopoly and its not the same situation.
(b) The scale of capacity is different. It's a once daily service (or less).
It's somewhat similar though, worse actually. SFO-EWR had SFO-JFK as an alternate option. When you factor that in (and alternates), there was UA, AA, DL, and B6 in the market.
SFO-HNL has UA, HA, and DL. There are no alternates on the Hawaii side, and if you add in alternates on the Bay Area side, that adds only AS (and some more HA). HA is not going to stop serving SFO out of its primary hub. UA is not going to stop serving HNL out of its main West Coast hub (though frequency/capacity may come into play here).
DL is only flying an infrequent, oddly timed flight to utilize an aircraft that would otherwise sit overnight, so as long as they cover the gas money and crew costs, they don't really have much to lose.
UA does have the most to lose here.