Todays WSJ bears an interesting article dealing with the state of the airline industry and anti-trust reg's and so on.


Accordingly, the US airline industry is divided into 3 groups of carriers:

The big three. American, United and Delta own about 54% of the market...

The specialists. Profitable niche players such as Southwest (a "product specialist" focusing on short-haul flights), Jet Blue and Midwest Express (both "market specialists" focusing on NYC & Milwaukee markets, respectively) and others...

The ditch dwellers. These are airlines that are stuck in a no-man's land between the big generalists and the focused specialists. They are too large and diversified in terms of markets and services to be viable as focused specialists, but too small to compete across the board with the big three. Those in the ditch (typically, companies with between 5% and 10% market share) include US Airways, Northwest, Continental and, until its recent purchase by American (justified, ironically, by United's announced plans to acquire US Airways), TWA.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/004788.html


So is CO really a "ditch dweller"? I do not really think so, based on what little I see anecdotally and the earnings reports, etc!

The problem is that the "ditch" companies have no long-term future, serve only to drag down the industry's financial performance as well as its ability to serve customers efficiently and with reasonable service standards. "Ditch" companies incur costs that are comparable to those incurred by the big three...


Perhaps there is a need for a 4th classification!

I've been watching, but I'm seemingly missing something important here!



[This message has been edited by doc (edited 07-03-2001).]