Originally Posted by
cerealmarketer
Delta had big JFK, LAX, SEA plans before UA integrated. The UA reliability problems were gravy.
Why could they do it?
You pointed it out above.
Very high margin fortress hubs ATL, MSP, DTW, SLC that let them reinvest and take losses as they picked off pockets of margin from AA, UA, and AS.
Witness AA / Parker struggling to make a case for his yield matching DL's going forward. There's something more structural that happened than just UA tripping up, and part of it was DL's ability to come into non-fortress markets with essentially no premium traffic and pick it off with lower, reasonable premium prices vs offering a binary full fare / upgrade model.
The upside is DL having a harder time growing yields than it used to now that the low hanging fruit are picked.
Delta also have arguably had a better product than their rivals for a while now. Not by a huge margin, but not insignificant either. I think Delta is a good example of how it can pay off to create positive differentiation via service - as long as you can still manage costs.