AA really are in serious trouble, like United they positioned themselves as the Businessmans airline. When the economy's good that's fine, huge revenue that disguises for a while their high cost base. But when the economy contracts and companies start cutting out business class tickets, that's when it starts to crumble, meanwhile Southwest and JetBlue go from strength to strength. AA's year end numbers were still down 15% on 2000. The operating margin was -15.2%.
AA are losing half a billion dollars a quarter! No airline can survive that. I think you'll see a low cost AA wing sooner rather then later,
the CFO Jeff Campbell has refused to rule that out.
They're also in talks to buyers for it's AMR Investment arm which runs employee retirement assets and mutual funds, worth 140-190 million dollars.
It does look though as if the unions will agree to labour cost reductions.
Last edited by OneWorld22; 16th Mar 2003 at 13:56.