Comments

1. I don’t quite get the complaint about the AA vacations service hours…if I had to hypothesize, I’d say that the distribution of AA vacations destinations would be a huge spike for Mexico / Caribbean (well-covered by the new hours), a smaller spike for Europe (the hours here still cover most of the standard day in Europe), and then a scattering of everywhere else. These hours really only don’t work for APAC, which I’d suspect to be a very small fraction of their volume.

2. Doesn’t work for a chunk of the day in Europe. American does still serve Asia, Mideast, Australia et al. So warning about use beyond the Americas. You aren’t their core customer.

3. I think AA has made it clear long ago that anyone traveling outside the Americas isn’t their core customer, haha.

4. @Gary – American may serve those APAC locations, but AAVacations likely has very little business there. Good to warn if flying to those destinations, but based on AA Vacation’s highlighted destinations on the front page carousel, the featured listings beneath that, the Destinations page, and the Hotels page, there is not a single highlighted item that isn’t entirely (or essentially entirely) in the Americas and Western Europe outside of a couple of the 75+ “Featured” hotel brands that also have an Asia presence in addition to strong Americas/Western Europe footprint.

   I’d be shocked if EMEA/APAC made up more than 5% of AAVacations bookings, and would put the over-under at about 2%.

5. Yes, connected in Delhi a couple of times. Quite seamless.

6. regarding the IAD expansion, unlike in the SEA article, the author did use all of the publicly available information to draw a reasonable conclusion.
   UA’s massive refleeting and upgauging has enormous implications for its airport operations and will add billions of dollars of additional costs to reconfigure and/or expand its hub airports on top of its industry -topping fleet capex. There is simply a limit to how much growth is economically viable.
   Add in that IAD is and will likely always be the third tier domestic airport in the Baltimore/Washington area and it is hard to justify adding a bunch of domestic capacity when it will be difficult to price it just to be able to push a certain amount of international connections over IAD rather than EWR.

   btw, Gary, it was fun to run into you recently at an unnamed airport and then to end up within a row of you on the same unnamed flight. Apparently, it is a small world after all.

7. “Add in that IAD is and will likely always be the third tier domestic airport in the Baltimore/Washington area and it is hard to justify adding a bunch of domestic capacity when it will be difficult to price it just to be able to push a certain amount of international connections over IAD rather than EWR.”

   And, yet again, I find myself disagreeing with the infamous Tim ‘DL” Dunn. The above opinion is based on the idea that IAD is what it is and what it always will be. Pure bullplop. I am old enough to remember when IAD was the glamour airport and DCA was a bus station masquerading as a regional airport.

   Times change, but one thing doesn’t: room for growth. DCA has none. BWI is hardly a player, being far removed from much of the DMV’s population centers. And then there’s IAD; located smack dab in the middle of the wealthiest two counties in the USA. With LOTS of room for growth. Unlike the small minded DL fanboy here, I actually can see where UA is going with this and I think it’s brilliant. The last big airport in the northeast corridor with any real room to grow and they’re the ones doing it. How is that hard to justify,

   As for EWR? You can put lipstick on that pig, but it’s always going to be in Newark which will never be an enviable place to fly from. In the world’s most congested airspace. Come on Tim, you’re better than this.

8. in other words, you are projecting your bias upon actual data.
   DCA IS the preferred domestic airport for Washington DC proper while IAD’s only real benefit for Maryland is as the international airport. WN does carry a significant amount of domestic traffic from the Washington DC metro whether you know or want to admit it or not.
   IAD is one of the least developed domestic airports relative to the size of its international operations and that reality will impact UA’s ability to build IAD as a true hub.
   There is no real data to indicate that is going to change and actually quite a bit to indicate that geography is real and has nothing to do with facilities or even subsidies that IAD has received or might receive.

9. The democracy activist should have went to embassies for Canada and the United Kingdom instead as they are more in line with a former UK colony. There seems to be more to the story than is being told.

10. @AngryFlier “As for EWR? You can put lipstick on that pig, but it’s always going to be in Newark which will never be an enviable place to fly from.”

    Have you been to new EWR terminal A? We thought it was pretty impressive, and both our Delta Sky Club and United Club visits were excellent. The fairly new United Club in terminal C is pretty nice (better than most in the system), and I’ve heard the old one that was closed down (which admittedly was a dump) has now reopened and is quite nice as well. Compared with PHL or JFK, Newark Airport is heaven!

11. To answer your question: yes, I have (Have you ever done an international-to-international connection in India..?). SIN to KTM connecting through DEL. I loved Air India lounge’s showers and bedrooms for my long layovers.

12. I like the Dulles moon buggies. It’s kind of like being in a Sean Connery James Bond movie from 1970.