Originally Posted by
SFOPeter
For the seat count, here's every route flown by a maxed out AA plane vs. the smallest VX plane
37 AA mainline A321s with 187 seats = 6,919, plus 12 CR9 with 76 seats = 7,831
69 VX A319s with 119 seats = 8,211
And more realistically it is:
69 VX A320s with 146 seats = 10,074
Again, this "fact" that AA is larger than VX out of SFO is quite questionable.
(Typo corrected in bold.)
First of all, capacity is not equal to passengers carried.
If your numbers are right and applicable year-round, lower load factors on VX could explain the difference. AA certainly doesn’t have the same number of flights 365 days a year; nor does VX. You need to account for seasonal and day-of-week schedule variations. Two of many reasons I trust the BTS and the airport’s report on traffic statistics far more than your (or my) estimates. And either way, as
MAH4546 said originally, VX is certainly not much bigger than AA at SFO.
And you’re comparing cities and saying that AA can’t possibly be bigger than VX because they serve 8 cities while VX serves 25. But AA sends (online) traffic to far, far more than 8 cities from SFO, whereas (pm)VX only sends (online) traffic to those 25.