Originally Posted by
Eastbay1K
While AS is ahead at SFO, it still doesn't get me where I need to go much of the time, and if all (or most) roads lead through SEA, it makes for challenging same day connections. AS + AA combined at SFO don't help me out much more. As much as I don't like ATL, I probably like DFW and MIA a lot less.
Right, but (emphasis added):
Originally Posted by
olouie
AS could actually do very little and really get a lot of new customers
They've literally been trying things at SFO for most of a decade and gotten not much of anywhere (much like VX TBH, they hit a wall with a globe shape on it fairly early on and went from aggressive expansion to "hold the line until someone buys us out"). SFO is still below their 2018 passenger numbers (the West Coast has been a bad place to be in expansion mode as tech companies aggressively trim travel expenses for teleconferencing). I expect AS to do in SFO what they do in SJC/SAN/LAX, grind it out slowly and boring, and probably to stay away from throwing money into a bottomless pit given that UA likes to put 777s or shuttle frequencies on routes and create bottomless maws of low yield when seriously threatened. Lots of leisure routes, try things, be quick to go "nope", be good at beancounting. It will suck if you want them to replace UA out of SFO for business flying.
DL has poured even more into SEA than AS has poured into SFO (and has vastly bigger resources behind them to do so,
and unlike SFO, didn't have a dominant longhaul carrier that has some network effects to fight through) and SEA is not exactly ATL for them. Or even JFK/LAX. They're not close to toe-to-toe with AS in that market. So I question the idea that "very little" gets you more than very little when quite a lot hasn't yielded quite a lot.