FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Were The Early 80's Really That Much Better On UA Than Now?
Old Dec 13, 2019, 1:33 pm
  #325  
mike1968
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Chicago
Programs: UA1MM*GL/1K, AA, BnVy PlatL, HH Silver,
Posts: 680
Originally Posted by cerealmarketer
AA/UA were cash machines in the late 80s, and then again in the late 90s - which didn't help with the cost discipline they needed as Southwest, etc were gaining domestic share heading into 2001 and companies figured out paying $2k for a roundtrip Y LA-NY refundable fare wasn't necessary - make employees buy nonrefundable

They placed the 777 order right around the Gulf War recession

You could argue they took the order of the 777s and 747-400 too quickly - basically 1995-1999 over 100 widebodies (unprecedented before or after in the western commercial aviation world I believe in such a short span) - rather than spreading them over 10 years - and got left with boom time capacity and cost heading into a corporate recession in 2001
Yes and no...these weren't really additive to the fleet but were replacements...the 747-400s coming on line from 1989/90 (so over a 10 year delivery cycle by the final ones in early 2000s). By 1998 UA still had 24 DC-10s and 13 747-100/200s against orders for 18 remaining 777s (34 in fleet) and 15 remaining 747s (36 in fleet). So mostly these were the final replacements that also brought savings in fuel efficiency 1-2 fewer engines (i.e., 777-->D10, 747 early gens/SPs from PA) and the elimination or the flight engineers from all widebody types.

United financially was better positioned than most in the 1990s, but one key difference that kept UA going very strongly was the ESOP that lifted UAL stock to somewhere north of $200 in 1995 dollars. It gave the extra capital to modernize the 1970s jet fleet in a way that escaped say TWA (also needing to replace it's aging fleet of 747-100s, L-1011s, 727s and DC-9s)

$2k for LA-NY seems cheap. I regularly was paying $2.5k for ORD-SFO/LAX and at least $1.6K for ORD-NYC/DC/BOS flights for a coach seat pre-economy plus and then being angry that an upgrade didn't clear. That should give some indication of the cash cow UA was during the dot.com boom of the late 1990s.
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