Originally Posted by
jsloan
Market share and profit are two entirely different things. I suspect UA is perfectly fine letting DL and AA fight for supremacy for low-yielding LAX traffic. (Airfares out of LAX are generally much cheaper than airfares out of SFO).
And, to reiterate the point that was being made — there’s virtually no O/D traffic in the LAX/SAN market. So, UA dropping LAX/SAN does not imply that UA doesn’t care about the LAX market. If anything, it’s somewhat bullish for the LAX market, because UA is saying that they can fill their planes without SAN connecting traffic.
Only conjecture at that point as we don't know the revenue-profitability numbers for each of those carriers at LAX. Delta is consistently the most profitable (financially published numbers) of the big 3 legacy carriers and is very well run so I suspect DL is not just losing money for the sake market share at LAX.
With lower-yielding economy passengers, there is still a high-yielding first class cabin. The LA market is the 2nd largest CSA in the USA with 18.6M people vs SF Bay Area with 9.4M people. There are a lot of potential high-yield passengers in that population.