flyinthrew

We just need AA to not crump. I don’t think they’re circling the drain as badly as others think (usually based on Seeking Alpha blogs), but if this thing drags on in the mid-50s or less through summer ‘21, then the worst of times is in fact not behind us. That graph of how DFW was back to somewhere near 70% (followed closely by PHX, I think) was definitely nice though. I’m not an AA fanboy, but I’m rooting for them, if anything, so the industry doesn’t need to try to sustain an airline that can price seats irrationally during reorganization.

rickair7777

Previous outbreaks weren't pinned on air travel (other than the initial global spread).

A holiday outbreak will be pinned on group gatherings, and winter weather driving people indoors. Most people who are getting together are driving, not flying anyway.

It won't be pinned on covid transmission while airborne because that's rare.

rickair7777

35% yesterday has to be taken in context.

Most people prefer not to travel on Thanksgiving, Dec 24/25, or Jan 1. In normal times holiday capacity limits drive up prices so some folks fly on the day of just to get lower prices.

This year there's not much of a capacity crunch, so more people can avoid flying on the day of. Sunday will presumably be back up.

pangolin

You have to remember this is a year over year comparison. Less people flew on Thanksgiving day last year. The 35 pct is a bit depressing.

Looking at loads Sunday on AA and most everything I look at is wide open.

rickair7777

You missed my point.

Most people PREFER not to fly on the actual holiday, but normally some have to for price or availability because capacity is normally maxed. This year I think more folks had the option to fly on the days they preferred, due to available capacity.

pangolin

Gotcha. You are right I missed your point.

DarkSideMoon

Anecdotally, I think a good chunk of these tickets may have been one-ways. I know a lot of college students who were hanging out on campus remote went home for thanksgiving and are staying all the way through Christmas now.

KSUto64

How many college students go off to school without a car these days? If I weren’t going back after thanksgiving you can bet I’d be driving back home because I wouldn’t want to leave my vehicle. However if it were just a visit home I’d fly assuming the drive wasn’t worth it.

All that to say my guess is most college students weren’t buying one way tickets and leaving vehicles behind.

AirlineAnalyst

We had a period of 11 days of substandard results (Oct 31-Nov 10). Not all 11 of the days were terrible but that is how I'm deciding to view that time period.

Since April, we have been on an almost constant upward trajectory, it's expected that we will have a few hiccups.

I got blasted for being optimistic earlier in this thread. But every single pessimistic guess has been proven false.

I went back to the earlier thread and read through the posts. It is the same rehashed shoddy analysis and nutty people:

The highlights of which are

• summer ends and travel stops
• democrats r bad n want to imprison me
• CDC/Fauci/Biden should commit Seppuku
• if you take out old people dying at a much higher rate than they usually do, this is having no impact
• they will adjust the tests so Biden can look good

My personal favourite is the "cAsEs DoN't MatTeR" or "they're hospitalizing observation cases now!!" crowd who are silent when hospitalizations are at 50% above the peak of the previous two waves (additional 30,000 hospitalized above either Wave 1 or Wave 2 peaks of 60,000) or when deaths are the highest since May.

If only there were some sort of temporal relationship between rising cases and hospitalization and deaths. I guess we will never know.

My view:
Q1: Substantial number of vaccinations will take place. No national shelter-in-place order.
Q2: Pilot & FA recalls begin
Q4: >75% of 2019 numbers

Combined with the >5% of pilots that accepted early retirement or will hit 65 since Covid began, you will probably be back in your job if you were hired more than a year before Covid.

Basically 1 year from when the Cares Act expired/stopped restricting furloughs, anyone who joined their airline prior to January 2019 should be recalled. It's why I advocate saving 1 year of living expenses.

I don't think there is any way the industry does not recover by 2025. I could reasonably see 2022 or 2023 for full recalls. Each individual component might not recover (business travel might be set back 5-10 years) but the airlines are staffed by people whose job is to maximize profit and are acting with more information than anyone on this board has/can share. They will adjust the routes and schedules to maximize profit.

C17B74

Originally Posted by AirlineAnalyst:
I don't think there is any way the industry does not recover by 2025. I could reasonably see 2022 or 2023 for full recalls. Each individual component might not recover (business travel might be set back 5-10 years) but the airlines are staffed by people whose job is to maximize profit and are acting with more information than anyone on this board has/can share. They will adjust the routes and schedules to maximize profit.[/QUOTE]

^^^Makes a lot of sense. Recover = able to float vs jet boating around with record profits. Full recalls will definitely come around hopefully sooner than later, but half will be driven by early and normal retirements and probably not by huge gains in traveler numbers, especially from the business sector as mentioned above. Can’t really say we will match numbers prior to this debacle anytime soon. Even 80% would be awesome right, gotta long way to go... Obviously Carriers will not be 15K, 13k, 12K strong like they were as they morphed/dieted to meet requirements/survivalist mode. International will drive the remaining 10-20% perhaps and that has a minimum of several years of hard impact ahead... It’s “raccoon city“ post viral escape globally out there - Resident Evil