Originally Posted by ashill

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.