Originally Posted by
dinanm3atl
I agree. All 3 major legacies should have a combined response to thwart the level of stupidity of "We ban from cabin and move to hold. All is safe now!"
Even something to the effect of "Look, we support more and better security...
but this isn't it!" would seem to be the order of the day.
TBH there's one way they could cover themselves and still hammer this down hard, if they worked with their alliance partners: "We support enhanced measures and are prepared to work with the government to develop them. However, if those measures rise to the projected level, we also project a decline in travel of X% for business and Y% for leisure. In such a case, we collectively expect to cut the following routes, downgauge these others, etc."
Realistically this would probably mean that some "secondary" airports (BOS and either BWI or IAD on the NEC, probably DTW or MSP in the midwest for DL/Skyteam, etc.) get trashed. A lot would depend on the magnitude of the projected hit. On the other side of the Atlantic, I could see a retrenching into Paris, London, and Frankfurt from other airports. Keep in mind that it wouldn't take a big hit to load factors to knock out (or knock back to seasonal status) quite a few secondary routes.