Originally Posted by ashill

AA management has been accused of not always making the best decisions, but I'm pretty sure that they knew when they left JFK-ZRH that DL and LX fly the route and that AA would lose a large fraction of their business and revenue on that route to those two when they abandoned the nonstop.

Did they say they lose revenue or they lose money? Because if they lose revenue (ie their revenue on the route is negative), that's truly impressive. However, I can certainly believe that their costs exceed their revenue. It's not difficult to imagine DL and/or LX making a profit when AA doesn't on a particular route. For example, DL can offer a good many more connections at the JFK end, in part because they don't have a hub 120 miles away that can probably serve every connection that would be possible over JFK just as efficiently (from AA's point of view; I recognize that a small number of passengers [most of whom are probably on FlyerTalk] might prefer JFK over PHL as a connecting airport, but I would bet the number of passengers who will choose a flight based on that difference is pretty small. In fact, I'd bet there's a larger number of people who will avoid JFK and its chronic delays than who will avoid PHL and it's slightly-less-chronic delays).

DL also could easily have a different mix of corporate contracts, frequent flyers, operational costs, etc at both the NYC and ZRH end. (It really could be different in a way that favors this route rather than larger overall.)

And DL could be losing just as much money as AA but be more willing to stick it out for whatever reason. The revenue picture is likely to improve for DL and LX with AA gone, just as it would have improved for AA and LX if DL had left.

There are just all sorts of ways that DL and LX could be doing better on this particular route than AA even without AA management doing a poor job. At the end of the day, AA just isn't as strong in NYC as DL. This all, of course, has been hashed out at great length in this thread.