Originally Posted by
channa
Or a combination of the above, plus the overall poor UA product.
Also if you look at the ramp up of the DL JFK and LGA hubs, it's also possible that DL has taken on some of the NYC business which may have been formerly UA's (and CO's), not to mention post-merger UA's shrinkage in LAX.
Customers who fly (flew) PS likely fly other routes as well, and they may have switched carriers altogether. I would not be surprised if UA's PS performance mirrors UA's overall performance with respect to its competitors.
Delta has repeatedly cited strength and market share gain amongst "corporate sales" in NYC and LAX. At LAX it has clearly come in large part from UA, its harder for me to say re NYC. As I have noted several times, since Jeff took over United's revenue has stagnated.
United had $8608M in operating revenue in 1Q 2015, in the same quarter in 2011 (before jeff put his plan into place) United had $8202M in operating revenue. that is 4.95% growth in operating revenue (I used the broadest measure as it included "other revenue" such as TODs, etc)
Delta, well it had $9388M in operating income in 1Q 2015 and it had $7747M in 1Q 2011. So DAL's operating income grew by 21.15%.
Delta went from having much smaller to having much larger operating income. Had UAL had Delta's growth in revenue it would have had another $1.331B in income in 1Q 2015. So the passengers are clearly going to DAL, and many of them are from UAL, whether they are from NYC is another question I can't answer.