hoosiereph

One area that AA/AS partnership still needs to step up is on reciprocal upgrades.

SJC ORD LDR

It would be very difficult with the AA 500 mile upgrade system and the AS unlimited upgrade system.

avidflyer

For ExPlat they can

sdsearch

At the moment, AA is busy enough integrating oodles of hubs from two different airlines (AA & US) into one. Now's not the time time they would consider starting yet another hub for international flights. They've already got two hubs on / near the west coast, LAX which is where they're expanding internationally and PHX which never had trans-Pacific flights in the US era and is not clear what the "new AA" plans to do with it long-term. (Short term it [a] relieves domestic pressure from LAX which is [at least temporarily] gate-constrained for AA, and [b] one of the agreements they had to make with the DOJ/etc for the merger to happen was to not get rid of any hubs "too soon".)

DL is able to be doing it right now because DL is far enough past its merger with NW. And, btw, isn't SEA a historical NW hub ("Northwest Orient Airlines")?

DL2SXM

That much I realize, to much on the AA plate right now to consider but there is no reason why it can't happen in a few years time and AA would have instant domestic feed---that's to say if AS wanted to play real hard ball with DL.

LarkSFO

But then AA would just be copying DL, and in the process pissing off AS just like DL is doing now.

Or do you think AA would concede the domestic feed to AS, and just fly the Int'l flights?

My question: Why doesn't AS begin some long haul Int'l of their own?

pbarnette

If AS wanted to play domestic feeder to an international airline at SEA, we wouldn't be having this discussion. There is no reason to think they'd have any interest doing for AA what they were unwilling or unable to do for DL.

Frankly, I think that AS is making a monumental miscalculation. SEA will become a TPAC hub of significant size for someone. The geography and local demographics make that a question of when and not if. They can try and protect what they have, but if they don't provide feed to whoever sets up an Asian hub at SEA, then they will see increased domestic competition. I simply don't see them scaring DL (or AA) away, and frankly, I think it would be so costly that I don't see why they would want to.

DL2SXM

Its been stated before by Delta that they want to turn SEA into a major Asian gateway. Without the domestic network that AS enjoys, it will be extremely tough to accomplish this. With the limited gate space situation and the inadequate infrastructure that SEA is right now, it will be very tough for Delta to accomplish this. I think I remember reading somewhere that Delta wants to expand domestically at SEA by a lot but that will of course take a long time to do. OTOH, AA coming in with a bunch of wide bodies to fly TPAC with direct feed from AS can be done as soon as AA can get the planes (or AS for that matter).

Dieuwer

Why must AA do that? CX, JL, and KE can do so.

LarkSFO

us2

Delta has plenty of gates including the entire South Satellite building. What DL has done in 3 years has been pretty impressive; they've established a very strong foothold in SEA that would make It very hard for AA to move in, which I think was the whole point of doing it when they did.

AA could move in and try to rely on AS feed for their routes, but the reason DL couldn't make that work is the same reason AA won't be able to make it work -- the inability to coordinate schedules without antitrust immunity. I think one reason DL wound up going head to head with AS is that they tried that approach and it didn't work.

In any case, I think AS will survive just fine. It's a good carrier with a good product and a very loyal customer base.

Dieuwer

What is all this babble about "AA must move in otherwise...".
Nobody has "moved in" at BOS, and BOS still had lots of growth internationally. In fact, BOS is now a very strong OneWorld city.

mrcimino1

Now that a few years have past, it is much easier to see what has happened between AS and DL and to see the reasoning on both sides. Input from my contacts at DL have helped me to get a perspective on what has transpired.

3 years ago, DL decided that they needed a West Coast launching point for non-stop flights to Asia which would bypass the expensive to operate hub at NRT. After the merger with NW they inherited DTW as the major gateway to Asia. But the range of the fleet only allowed for non-stops to northern cities in Asia and not places like HKG, MNL, or BKK. They realized (and rightly so) that they could not compete with CX for their non-stop NYC-HKG business if the only thing they could offer was NYC-DTW-NRT-HKG. You might have to discount it a bit, but you could probably skim off some corporate traffic if your offering was NYC-SEA-HKG.

So to build a launching point at Sea-Tac or any other west coast airport, one of two thing was required. Either a massive local population AND a critical mass of local corporate entities like they have at JFK, OR a huge amount of domestic feed for all of those international departures like they have at ATL and DTW. They asked AS for more domestic feed at SEA and the answer was simply "No, we have to maintain our own hub at SEA first, with flight times and available seats that will generate a profit for our own operations." It is not hard to understand this thinking because the share of the fare that AS would get from a code-share connection to an international flight is based on the ratio of mileage of each of the segments and the domestic segment of 200-500 miles is so small compared to the over the water segment that AS would end up losing money on the proposition. They wisely turned it down, but that meant that now DL has been forced to build up their own domestic feed for their international flights out of SEA. And now they find themselves competing head to head with AS on more and more routes every year (see the graph posted a short while ago in this thread).

Other events have played into this whole scenario, including the WN purchase of Air Tran. When WN decided to dump the Air Tran 717's and DL decided to pick them up, a miracle happened! All of a sudden DL now had a lot of extra EMB175's, CR7's, and CR9's that they could move to the west coast and use to provide some decent feed at SEA as they built up their international schedule.

One last thing to point out is that there was never any hope of SEA being able to support all of those international flights by itself. The domestic feed was an absolute necessity. The other west coast options of SFO and LAX had been ruled out because UA was already firmly entrenched at SFO and because every airline in the world already was serving LAX so the competition was far more than would be found up north at SEA. Besides, there is a psychological advantage when you try to sell NYC-SEA-HKG compared to NYC-LAX-HKG. To most people it "seems" to be a shorter and better routing and the distance is actually 900 miles less. So SEA was a logical choice for DL, but AS chose not to play along with it.

SO BE IT. We will see what develops from here.

Dieuwer

NYC-SEA-HKG when you can fly NYC-HKG nonstop? You must be dreaming.
Only flights originating west of the Mississippi and connecting at SEA to Asia make sense.
Even Boston, the red-headed stepchild of US domestic airlines with respect to flight to Asia no longer need hubs like DTW or NYC to connect to Asia. We now have our own CX, JL, and HU flights!

The biggest loser might actually be DTW...

mrcimino1

You can sell ANYTHING if the price is right!