I don’t fly loco’s (one time I flew Southwest to Vegas and one time Virgin Blue to MEL), but when they come into a market, the biggies lower their prices. When Jetblue started their JFK-ONT non-stop service, UA lowered that fair by around $100US. Now, they didn’t pull cutthroat, predatory tactics, a la AA, by ‘suddenly’ introducing non-stop JFK-ONT service to compete, they just lowered the fair (not quite matching, it was still a little more) on the JFK-LAX-ONT and the JFK-DEN-ONT run. I was very happy, as I used to frequent that route on UA, and my cousins were very happy as they started frequenting it on Jetblue. Back to AA. When Jetblue opened up a mini-hub in LGB, all of a sudden, AA started serving LGB-JFK non-stop, to compete directly with Jetblue. A few years back, Legend airlines took a few DC-9’s, put an all business setup in them, and started flights from Dallas Love Field (not DFW, where AA is based) to LAX and IAD. Well, guess who goes and outfits a few F100’s with an all business setup and starts flying from Love Field to the same 2 destinations, yep, good ol’ AA.

I concur, Mongu. I guess you could say they would be gaining market control by doing that. I’m sure Airbus isn’t complaining, considering the more firm orders they have, the more cashflow they have, plus less worries about the project getting to the break even point. How many airframes would they need to roll out before they broke even, doesn anybody know a rough figure?

Them and Southwest. Both still growing and making profits.

I hope Jetblue doesn’t expand too quickly. Perhaps they’ll open up another hub to augment their JFK and LGB hubs, like ONT for instance!

When DL first took over Pan Am’s JFK hub and all their Euro routes, they also got ahold of their A310’s. I once saw a pic of like 5 DL A310’s all parked at LGW, at once. They didn’t operate those for too long. They wound up leasing 6 of them to Air Jamaica, of which Air Jam still currently uses (not sure if they still have all 6)., and getting rid of the rest. Maybe they even wound up selling those to Air Jam, after the initial lease. Delta also took over Pan Am’s mini FRA hub and operated out of their for a little while with 727’s. They withdrew from there around ’96 and then concentrated their 20+ Euro routes mainly from JFK, but also from ATL.

Nice backdrop for that pic, taken from Imperial Hill, no doubt. My father flies Delta religiously. Ironic how, I have yet to fly with them.

America West did, in fact, feed BA pax from its Phoenix hub. They even used to put BA’s symbol underneath theirs at their check-in kiosks, a la NW and KLM. I’m not sure if they still do, however, America West ‘technically’ is not considered a ‘loco.’ Their fair structures are not like Southwest’s, where everything is a one-way ticket. They are still part of all the national reservation systems, albeit, their fares are usually (not always) cheaper than all the biggies.