Originally Posted by fastair

You mean high value aircraft sitting idol, aging and requiring payments to be made for no income, but with depreciation? Or do you mean high CASM for short haul routes that don't get the RASM needed to break even and fly the 747 from CHI to MSP?

You are damned if you do, you are damned if you don't.

The grass is always greener. We want low fares, AND we want inefficient systems that give scheduling options?

For every upside there is a downside. This is the summer. It is peak season just about everywhere. Resources are scarce. Pilot hours and widebody planes are the scarcest. I would think that when margins are high, you capitolize on that short 3 month season by trying to bank as much change as possible for the other 9 months of low margin flying, where you can afford to have more aircraft idol as spares.

In the end, UA is a corporation. Their job is to return to investors $$. Now, the customers are unhappy. If they had spares, the investors would be unhappy. If they lowered labor costs to be able to afford spares and fly the same number of planes, the employees would be unhappy.

I belive that flying in the summer stinks on most airlines, "world class" or "low class". If you were on one of these flights, I sympathize. A flight to Rome can be a once in a lifetime thing and UA's need to return $$ to the shareholders has prevented UA form having a spare aircraft sitting idol on the chance this happend. Bad luck happens, sometimes to the same flight number. Let's see if this becomes an abbaration in stats, or if this becomes the pattern before passing judgement. It is a new route, and it will have it's maturing period before everything is smooth.