Originally Posted by
formeraa
Well, AA could have kept enough 757s for Hawaii service, until the 321neo/737MAX8 were certified, but someone (DP) didn't think far enough ahead. Very short-sighted management decisions.
The other issue is why are they waiting until all passengers are on the plane. That is simply poor operational planning. If they need to block seats regularly, why don't they simply reduce the capacity of the plane for booking purposes???
Keeping a subfleet that's less fuel efficient for a particular route doesn't exactly sound like it would be a "good" management decision. I'm not sure why you believe this is short-sighted - the choice could well be current aircraft, or none at all.
And certainly the other issue cannot be planned for in advance. Winds, routing, the amount of baggage each person brings with them, not to mention no show patterns are all variable.
Sure, you could always undersell the flight. But then you would be preventing people from purchasing tickets and getting home on the day that they want when on certain days, the aircraft could have made it just fine. And underselling would eat into the financials of the route, which could mean that not operating it at all becomes more economical.