Originally Posted by
norcalfiend
That's not possible though - 4-5 of AA's gates are preferential use that require certain flight counts, gate usage, and passenger volumes. If AA does not hit those requirements, then it will lose gates. They've fought hard to keep those gates (and are spending $Bs on renovations), so unless something has changed recently and they're bizarrely OK losing their investments, AA's capacity will increase substantially.
Also you're overestimating how much market share AA has lost - LAX has struggled to recover to pre-COVID levels. AA has declined, but much of that drop is b/c renovations -> less gate capacity. Transtats data for domestic at LAX:
Thats good and all for LAX, but AA could have been much stronger at LAX and JFK if they wanted to. Pretty much AA's sunbelt strategy has cut strategic planning for LAX/JFK as leader hubs in AA's vision. Their discussion on A321XLR roll out and sunbelt strategy spelled this out as they didn't see much revenue growth at either JFK nor LAX. Until AA's management feel LAX is a winner in the future, I don't see much growth here, unfortunately as I personally am a big fan of LAX AA premium service team. They rather grow PHX, which in my opinion is a complete dump of an airport for premium flying.
Stats for
OCT 2024 from Simple Flying.
