The Street wants capacity discipline and maintaining margins, so I think this was just them signaling this in advance of their earnings call.
Originally Posted by
Fanjet
Even with record profits, you can still have flights in the system which make very little profit, or operate at a loss. Moreover, no one can predict what oil prices will be in the future. So, if oil prices continue to rise, such routes will become even more unprofitable. I also wonder if this will make UA rethink their planned aggressive growth strategy for the next few years.
UA has a hedge against fuel prices with their Houston hub - when fuel prices are high, traffic at Houston generally needs to grow. And the opposite is true when prices are low. So as long as that is the basis of their plan it should be fine.