Steve, when I come across them, I always like your trips down memory lane. Just out of curiosity, why did you leave AA?

Back in my UA days, I will also atest to never cancelling a flight solely because of load factor. In fairness, I worked for UAX, and we were paid for every departure.

That said, if we cancelled a flight seemingly because of light loads, somebody's flight was getting cancelled. Period. At ORD, we were also the victim of UA, who saved reduced capacity slots (T storm days) for their own use.