Originally Posted by
BlueHorseShoe2000
That's the real problem facing Midwest and many other airlines.
No, it's actually a problem pretty much unique to YX at the moment. Most airlines posted fantastic RASM increases in August -- one of the best monthly increases in the history of US commercial aviation. JetBlue was over 10%. Frontier was above 9%. Continental was something like 8%. USAirways almost that much. The other carriers haven't released RASM numbers yet, but they will be similarly stunning (especially AirTran, which had mind-bogglingly good August traffic increases).
The reason YX's stunk is because they added a lot of stupid capacity. Why did they do it? It's a no-brainer: they were trying to invent an alternative strategy to thwart the AirTran acquisition. AirTran (and most industry analysts) said the strategy was dumb, but remember Hoeksema was willing to try ANYTHING to keep his job and thwart AirTran's bid.
Now that he has a white knight (assuming the deal goes through), look for the new money-losing capacity to come out.