Originally Posted by
eponymous_coward
And they obviously don't punch well at covering second-tier midcon and East Coast destinations, because the demand for LAX/SFO/SEA-PNS nonstops isn't likely to show up and there is no real logical place for a midcon hub anytime soon (they could spend 10 years accreting market share in SFO/LAX/SJC/SAN and still be in a solid second place in all of those cities).
Please stop lumping LAX/SFO in with SEA. I understand you didn't start it—we're just haphazardly throwing around the term "West Coast"—but as the investor slides show, AS has ~4x as many flights out of SEA as it does out of LAX or SFO. These are qualitatively different networks. And that's before even considering that the competition will be much stronger ex-LAX/SFO simply due to the much larger markets in those two MSAs.