Originally Posted by
minnyfly
You can't have it both ways. In 2010 UA/CO were not merged, and it wasn't even announced until May. So that capacity is not from a merged level. It would be proper to then compare against pre-merger AA/US. As it shows, UA/CO wasn't as large as AA/US. So UA/CO never really had a chance at #1 in the long-run unless they significantly grew and/or AA/US shrank before the latter hooked up. To call them #1 in that time period is more based on a technicality than actual growth or decline of a market.
If you look at raw traffic and not percentages, you will see that UA has not "been in a downward spiral" at LAX, has not "substantially pulled down capacity", nor implemented "ongoing cuts". Those are false statements. Even if you give all SkyWest flying to the UA banner in 2010, which is not accurate, UA is off only 10% at LAX. The likely truth is that UA is somewhere in the flat to down 6 or 7% range for traffic LAX since 2010. If UA worked for a customer back then, it likely works for them today.
Merger was announced in may 2010, so 2010 is the baseline market share, which is why I used it. First year of cross-over benefits (and a combined bigger network) was 2011, and Jeff was in charge in 2011. So adding in 2011 we get:
2010: UA + CO17.6%; AA+Eagle 15.9%; DAL 11.1%, SWA 11.6%, SkyWest 4.3%.
2011: UA+CO 16.26% market share; AA+Eagle 16.48% share; DL 10.79% market share. Skywest (mostly UA, but some DL) ; 6.13%
2013: AA/Eagle: 17%, US 3% (20% total) UA 16.3%, DAL 13.5%, SWA 11%, AS 5% , SkyWest 3.5%.
2017: AA: 18.8%; DL 16.7%; UA 14%; SWA 11.6%; AS+VX 8.5% [Skywest is now included in UA and DL]
They were #1 when Jeff took over, fell to #2 in 2013, and are now #3 .