Originally Posted by
eponymous_coward
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.
This is all true, and neither AS nor VX has ever established enough of a presence in SFO to be all things to anybody. But does that matter? Is SFO profitable for them as a decent-sized focus city? Of course, with a much smaller operation than UA (and only marginally larger in terms of mainline passengers than AA or DL, though the SFO network on the other two is simply a busy spoke), they need much less revenue to be profitable. As you say, slow and boring and won't satisfy most SFO-based frequent travellers who want one airline/alliance to cover all their needs. But (vaguely on topic!) they have an appealing frequent flyer program that can help them fill the flights they do fly out of SFO (still a decent number), and if they command decent fares, it can be profitable. The frequent flyer program is plenty good enough to give free agents an incentive to fly AS when it works, or perhaps to lure SFO-based DL frequent flyers away. What wouldn't be profitable is running a ton of capacity they can't fill at reasonably high fares.