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Airlines Confidential Podcast
323 - Guest Co-Host Charles Duncan. Guest: David Seymour, COO, American Airlines
01:13:29
Guest Co-Host Charles Duncan. Guest: David Seymou…
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- [00:04]
A
Airlines confidential with Scott McCartney is made possible with support from RTX, Collins Aerospace, Pratt and Whitney and Raytheon connecting and protecting our world. Visit RTX.com infinityflight the leader in Cadet Academy flight training programs. Infinityflight.com Ontario International Airport in Southern California, SoCal so Easy Fly Ontario, and by Cirium, the world's most trusted source of Aviation analytics, cirium.com We also welcome your business support. Contact us at airlinesconfidential.com
- [00:49]
B
welcome to Airlines Confidential. Or should I say welcome to the remake of the 1966 Clint Eastwood Western, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And no, I'm not talking about super bowl ads since it's super bowl week, although I guess there's always good, bad and ugly with that. I'm talking about airline news from the past, the good, the bad, the ugly and the horrifying. Southwest Airlines had good news, American Airlines had both bad news and ugly news, and the National Transportation Board delivered the horrifying. I'm Scott McCartney and we'll talk about all of that and more. I'm fortunate this week to be with our very own Harry Callahan of airline myths and misconceptions, Charles Duncan. Charles, welcome back. Are you ready to, as Quint says, make my day?
- [01:38]
C
Oh, my goodness, Scott, you've outdone yourself with that opening. But all I can think of is I need to go back and rewatch. But you know, go ahead, punk. You know, make. Make my day. Yeah, but hey, it's always a pleasure to be here. And I was listening to last week's episode with Dave Hilfman, which, you know, I worked for Dave for a number of years and I can tell people that what we hear on the podcast is, is the real Dave and just such a pleasure to work with him over the years from day to day, week to week, and really miss seeing him regularly. But I enjoy hearing him through the podcast and, you know, a lot of the themes that you guys hit on last week, I think we're going to be a common thread this week. You guys mentioned the super bowl. We talked about the weather, we talked about o' Hare and a number of other elements. And we'll pick up on a lot of those them this week. And listen, you know, I think, you know, firstly, speaking of the weather, you and I were able to get Dave Seymour, American Airlines chief operating officer, to join us this week. And you know, huge thanks to Dave. He had a rough week. And we'll unpack all of the various goings on in addition to the weather and the operations in that giant storm that caused havoc across most of the country. But American had a particularly tough time and they canceled a higher percentage of flights than the other big air airlines, certainly more than, well, than their Delta and United peers and smaller players. And that prompted both an outcry from Americans, unions and the airline itself issued a public apology to customers. So lots of challenges getting crews to hotels and getting them rescheduled. And we'll hear more from Dave about, you know, just the challenges of what it takes, you know, in this day and age when, you know, when a carrier of their size has multiple of their hubs impacted by severe weather during the same week.
- [03:30]
B
We'll talk about all that. We had a great conversation with Dave. Really looking forward to bringing that to listeners. And by the way, Charles, I'm not sure if this is good, bad or ugly. I think it's actually great. But this week we also have a Duke Carolina basketball game. And as listeners may recall, I'm a Duke guy, you're a Carolina guy, and yet we get along. Yeah, no, it's really pretty amazing.
- [04:04]
C
It's going to be a good week for one of us and a bad week for the other next week.
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B
That's right. That's right.
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C
Because this is, this is the greatest rivalry. And I think we've actually split more or less 50, 50 over the 260 odd times he's been played. So.
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B
True.
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C
True.
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B
Well, yes, I hope it's not ugly. And, and as Clint would say, do you feel lucky anyway with that? I do want to mention that there's a really co happens. There are many cool things that happens with, with the Duke Carolina rivalry, but one of them, for the past eight years, the two school newspapers have done a rivalry challenge. It's a fundraising challenge, which school can outraise the other. And sometimes it's Carolina. Carolina's got a journalism school, a much larger alumni base. But Duke, which has no journalism school, has a great media studies program. That's, that's where I teach and I'm really blessed to be included in that, feel very lucky about that. But the newspaper, which I've been involved in for years has produced legendary journalists across the New York Times networks, Washington Post, Pulitzer winners, you name it. And it's an extraordinary thing. I think a lot of it has to do with the Duke Chronicle because there is no formal journalism program. There's now a minority at the school. But yet Duke pumps out really successful national journalists, which is a cool thing if you're interested in it. Dukechronicle.com or dailytarheel.com and I have to say, Charles, I just look quickly and Duke's winning right now.
- [05:46]
C
Hey, we've got a long way to go this week.
- [05:48]
B
And I love this long way to go, especially from when we're recording this. So. So big Olympics start this week. It's going to be a busy sports week, but also also plenty busy airline week. So I'm going to start with the good.
- [06:05]
C
Okay.
- [06:06]
B
And that's the week that Southwest Airlines just had. I have to say you kind of heard it here first. Southwest released earnings results for the fourth quarter and full year last week. But the big news was the company's forecast for 2026. Southwest said it expects earnings per share of at least $4 a share. Now, that was in the just completed year. Southwest earned 79 cents a share on a fully diluted basis. So we're talking about a quadrupling of profits at least and way ahead of most analysts expectations that were in place for 2026. I say most because, remember, JP Morgan airline analyst Jamie Baker was out with a double upgrade about three weeks ago and an estimate that Southwest could earn $5 a share this year. Once again, Jamie was right on the money. He moved his price target to $60 a share when the stock was still around 42. It got as high as 49 last week. What's going on? Exactly what we've been telling you. Southwest customers are accepting and perhaps even applauding assigned seats and extra legroom rows for purchase in the accepting category, checked baggage fees. The bottom line is cash is pouring in and it's going mostly to that bottom line. And here's the most important part of all this for Southwest. The company's Stock Jumped nearly 20% as I mentioned, traded as high as 49 on the first day after the announcement. My understanding is that's good enough for Elliott management to exit Southwest, and we saw a decline on Friday. I'm curious. We'll find out at some point because they're an insider. They're going to have to disclose. We'll find out some point if Elliot management was selling with this news or after this news came out. Typically, activist investors want to get in and get out with their profits. And this would seem to be a good time for Elliot to get out. And if that's the case, then Elliot probably won't have any of its five directors standing for reelection this year. And that means Southwest will have regained control of its future. It's a remarkable story, Charles, and I think you have to give Bob Jordan and Andrew Waterson and a lot of other folks at Southwest, huge credit for rolling up their sleeves and not only embracing change, but also enhancing change. They've made it a better airline, or so it seems for now. Elliott gets credit too, I think, for pushing Southwest to enter the modern airline era and for doing it quickly. The speed that Elliot forced on them, I think has really probably paid off. I'm sure it was, it was incredibly hard to manage, but they did all this quickly. Remember, Bob Jordan's first turnaround plan had a three year timeline. Elliot said, that's no good. You have to go faster. Southwest initial reaction was, you can't do that. And they did it so much faster.
- [09:14]
C
You're absolutely right, Scott. And listen, first, my hats off to Bob Jordan and Andrew. You, Dave, talk about Tom Doxy. And I mean, there's a, there's a huge team, a huge cast of characters there at Southwest. And I think, you know, it's probably unfortunate, I think you're right that, you know, they, that team needed the prod, the push from Elliot to make the uncomfortable, difficult changes and to do that quickly. But boy, I mean, the results. And you know, you talked last week as well about the Wall Street Journal annual rankings and there's just, I mean, such, you know, you come, you combine that with the financial results they released last week and the turnaround, you know, is phenomenal. I was lucky enough. I flew Southwest yesterday as we're recording this and you know, to, you know, here too, I mean, I saw a really smooth operation. Flights were on time for both the customers and the boarding agents, all the crew, the assigned seats, the new boarding groups, you know, the removal of the stanchions in the gate hold area. I mean, everything was smooth and flawless. My using of the app and getting my boarding pass with assigned seats, in fact, the only little, you know, sort of remnant of the past that I found as my flight was a through flight. I was flying from Denver to Long beach and then the airplane was continuing from Long beach to Sacramento. And the flight attendant made what I'm sure, you know, the same announcement she's made for years and years and years when we landed at Long Beach. Hey, for those of you who are continuing to Sacramento, please wait for everyone to get off who is, you know, getting off their flight here and then choose the seat you like, you know, and oops, she never corrected herself. And I, that was sort of left with me. But I must say, you know, clearly muscle memory and old habits can die hard like that. But it was a fantastic experience. I was Lucky enough to be towards the front of the airplane, enjoyed the extra leg room. Just overall, a really impressive performance by Southwest. And you know, Scott, you know, there's more to come, as you well know. You've been talking, you know, for, for many weeks here that, you know, Southwest has lounges coming and with that, no doubt a premium credit card deal that will be combined with the lounges and you know, even more revenue coming for the company. And look, you know, I think over the years in this business we've seen a number of turnarounds. Dave Hilfman and I were part of the Gordon Bethune worst to first turnaround of the 90s at Continental. And you know, and there have been other turnarounds as well, but this one I think we'll look back and we'll rank right up there in terms of corporate success and, and, and, and no doubt it's been hard work and we've been on the outside, but kudos to the team at Southwest. Really, really well done.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And hey, while we're, you know, we're focused on the good, you know, I guess it's now time to transition to the bad in your opening there, Scott. And, and, and, and we should probably start with American Airlines earnings. Last week American Airlines missed its earning estimates and the ST reported by quite a bit and it was a down market for the week ethic overall. But for the quarter, Americans earnings were down 83%, almost half a billion dollars lower than the prior year. For the full year, Americans earnings were down 87%. They had net income of $111 million, which was $735 million less than in 2024. Yes, some other airlines lost, you know, some airlines lost money last year and it's always great to be in the black and have a positive result. But you know, United and Delta in particular, and now Southwest, you know, hadn't had earnings, you know, well in excess of those amounts. In fact, Southwest was about four times had earnings, net income four times that of American for the full year. So it was a weak performance, I guess we can call it a bad financial performance for American in 2025. On their call, Robert Isom cited the government shutdown, saying that that was worth $325 million in lost earnings for the fourth quarter and that Americans hit harder by the government shutdown than other airlines. And I think that's probably largely due to their hub presence at Washington Reagan. But it seems to me there's a whole lot more going on than just the 43 day government shutdown. Impacting America. And yeah, it's just, yeah, tough and then I guess, well, we'll stick in the bad category. And JetBlue also released, you know, its financial results for the quarter and the full year last week and JetBlue had a loss. Their fourth quarter loss was $177 million, which was bigger than the loss of 44 million in the same quarter of 2024. Now for the full year, JetBlue also had a loss of $602 million, but that was better than their $795 million loss in 2024. So, you know, some improvement there and maybe some signs that the, the Jet forward turnaround plan there that Joanna Garrity and Marty St. George are rolling out but obviously still a lot of work to be done and you know, 2025 was not that turnaround year that those two had had been hoping for. So listen, I think with that we've covered the good, we've covered the bad. I hesitate to even ask what are the ugly and the horrifying we're going to hear about next.
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B
Yeah, yeah. I just on, on JetBlue it's interesting. I'm becoming more and more convinced that JetBlue's future is really going to depend on on South Florida. I think JetBlue's positioning itself to really take what it as much as it can in Fort Lauderdale. And if Spirit were to shut down, then I think that's really going to push JetBlue forward considerably. So we'll see if Spirit keeps going. That's probably particularly bad for JetBlue.
- [15:28]
C
Less growth opportunity. And we've seen JetBlue opportunistically add quite a bit of flying in Fort Lauderdale.
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B
Yeah, that's what caught my eye. That's what I'm thinking. That may sort of enhance whatever happens is going to happen for Spirit, may accelerate it. But they want to be there in position if there's a sudden loss of service in Fort Lauderdale.
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C
So interesting they're ready to pounce.
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B
So ugly is how storm fern clobbered American. American had more than 9,000 cancellations, far more than any other airline. Saturday, Sunday and Monday, the storm hit hard. The airline had lots and lots of cancellations. On Tuesday, things started to get better across the country. But on Tuesday, JetBlue canceled about 11% of its flights, according to Cirium Delta, about 8%, United only 2%. And American still canceled more than a quarter of its flights, 27%. And that pattern continued. American recovering a lot slower than other airlines, American said. And we're Going to learn a lot more from David Seymour about this. But the storm hit five of its hubs and was the most disruptive ever in its 100 year history. It's all rather fascinating from an airline operations perspective. Yes, the storm was really bad, was bigger than most of what we've seen before. It did hit hubs with ice, which is really hard to deal with. Hit hubs thousands of miles apart in a short period of time. It's not like it took three days to roll across the country. It was, you know, blanketing and it was fierce. The I shut down something like 75 airports at the same time at one stretch. But this is also a story of airline consolidation and airline growth. The bigger an operation gets, the more complexity is involved and that makes disruption more challenging. And we'll talk to David about that. I think we'll learn more about that. And so what was it that sank to horrifying? Even though we knew exactly what happened when an army helicopter flew into an American Airlines regional jet over the Potomac river in Washington a year ago, the final report and hearing from the National Transportation Safety Board this week was downright horrifying. Kudos by the way to NTSB for doing a superb job piecing this all together and giving us an actionable report that if taken seriously by the Federal Aviation Administration will save lives in the future. Totally convinced of that. I really commend this report. It's worth anybody in the business worth reading and looking at because it really categorizes so many of the problems that we have in air traffic control in particular right now. The NTSB said the mid air collision was entirely avoidable, which is horrifying in itself when you reflect on that. It showed how the FAA knew about potential conflicts and actual close calls many, many times between Washington Reagan passenger flights and helicopters flying in a corridor that had almost zero safety margin built into it. As as, and we talked about this before as that corridor was drawn far too close. I mean like only less than 100ft of separation with the approach path for the Runway in use, one of the Runway that regional jets use at Washington Reagan, the FAA knew it was overloading controllers. It knew that it was dumping too many arrivals on the small airport at once. It knew helicopters were flying too close to planes and it did nothing to solve problems and build in more safety margin. Nothing. Taken as a whole, it is a horrifying indictment of piss poor management and disregard for lives. Really to me, just horrifying. Typically, at least in my recollection of having covered a lot of these, although thankfully not a huge number, but covered my share of accidents over the years. The NTSB will issue a final report in a case like this saying the crash resulted from pilots failure to maintain safe distance or whatever. But that was not the case in this. You know, I expected FAA issues to be like a contributing factor. No, that's what they started with. Probable cause starts with the FAA's placement of a helicopter route in close proximity to a Runway approach path and the FAA's failure to review and evaluate helicopter routes and available data. So primary cause of this crash, not the pilots, the FAA. In addition, the FAA's failure to act on recommendations and overreliance on visual separation were contributing factors. Then the NTSB mentions lack of affected pilot applied visual separation by the helicopter crew. So the pilots are in there, but primarily the faa. And then the report goes back to the faa, the tower team's loss of situational awareness and degraded performance due to high workload by combining two positions, the local controller who's handling the landings at the airport and helicopter control that busy periods is supposed to be two positions. It was combined into one. Not in violation of the FAA rules, mind you, but obviously a contributing factor to the accident. The rules that allowed that to happen are the problem here. There's more. There's a long list of contributing factors. The NTSB issued 50 safety recommendations. 50 to the FAA, to the US army, to the Department of War, to the Department of Transportation, et cetera. It's a combination of policy changes, training improvements and technology needs. Things like computer tools that would better alert controllers to conflict. Yes. And tools that would better assess risk for supervisors. Yes. One recommendation is for a time based flow management system at the Potomac tracon. Yes. These are things that controllers in other parts of the world have been using for years. These are tools that are commercially available right now. Tools that save lives and promote more efficient air travel. These are simple things that we don't have here. And that is a huge problem. This NTSB report is a call to action. Fast response is needed. It's time for the DOT to show real progress, not just press releases. Wow.
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C
Well, there's a lot to digest there, Scott, and thanks for sharing your thoughts and perspective.
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B
Yeah, when I get wound up, I get wound up. It is clear.
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C
I just let you go. I didn't even try to interject. But. But you know, and you're truly an expert in this space. I heard on the US Public Radio a few of the victims families interviewed after the NTSB report and hearing and what struck Me, the piece I listened to focused on the victims families and in various crashes and how they can have an impact on keeping pressure on decision makers and policymakers and so forth forth. And it's, I'm certainly reminded of the, the Colgan Air crash 3407 and that ultimately that that group of families, you know, I think were largely responsible for the 1500 hour rule which, you know, we've talked about many, many times on the podcast as well. But I get the sense that this family group, you know, it has taken lessons and guidance from these other groups and they don't want to see their loved ones, you know, die in vain, you know, frankly. And so I suspect we're going to see them, you know, apply the appropriate pressure and help to support the NTCP recommendations and being made, you know, made into policy and law and whatever, whatever is required.
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B
So yeah, I just hope that they are and I think they are. That they push the right fixes.
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C
Yes.
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B
I think the Colgan families, they, they wanted something and what they got, I don't think.
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C
Yeah, no, I totally, yeah. Understand that and agree. But I, I see parallels there and, and understand it. How the families want to be doing something and latch onto it.
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B
Sure. Same with the Boeing 737 Max families.
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C
Yes.
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B
And have had a lot of impact on that.
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C
Yes.
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B
For the good.
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C
Yeah. And hey, listen, one, while we're, we're on the negative side of the slate, you know what, there's one, one other thing that probably falls into the ugly category, Scott, but certainly not, you know, not related to, you know, passing of lives and critical safety issues. But that was really the United's response to, you know, and really what you and Dave talked about last week, this line in the sand. And I must say I was really startled about an hour before American Airlines earnings release that we, you know, we spoke about a few minutes ago. United Airlines increased or announced a massive increase in flight activity at O' Hare coming this summer. They have roughly 650 peak day departures planned this summer prior to this announcement. And American was at about 500 daily departures coming peak day for the summer. So 650 and 500 and United announced 750 coming daily flights for the peak summer. And so my mind as an OPS person and someone who ran airport operations for United, you know, back about a decade ago, I am sincerely concerned that the o' Hare airfield is not going or, and the airspace are going to be severely challenged with that level of flight activity. Remember, it's not just American and United You've got all the other carriers who serve o' Hare as well and this is record setting levels of volume now the airfield has been improved. There's now sort of a DFW in Atlanta, like six parallel Runway sort of structure there at the airport designed to handle big volumes. But I think watch o' Hare and that, that you know, that that space is going to be a challenge I think to operate in and really felt for Robert Isom and the American team because you know, they were somewhat ambushed by this announcement going on right into their earnings call which as we've talked about, you know, it didn't have positive numbers. They're also, you know, under the gun, still dealing and digging out from the, the fern weather events. And now they have another battle or an escalation of their continuing battle at o' Hare coming for this summer. So yeah, both financially and I think operationally it's going to be a tough summer in, in Chicago for certainly for American and I think it's going to hurt and impact United's results. But I think Kirby is very focused on, on winning this battle at all costs and it feels very scorched earth. So let's watch that one, see what happens.
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B
Yeah, short term losses for long term gains. If you can, you know, force American to, to pull back in Chicago. They're going to be a lot of cheap tickets for, for somebody going to, I don't know some of these new
- [27:12]
C
destinations, a lot of cheap tickets. But, but pack your patience. I expect we'll see some flight delays. It could be and, and we'll see exactly when these, you know, United announced the 750 flights without detailed schedules. We don't know if this is a new expanded 10:11pm bank more flights at 5 and 6 in the morning or exactly when in the day. But it's going to put some strain there. There's no question on, on the existing operations there. So, so anyway, I'm reminded of LaGuardia when it was brought to its knees many, many years ago over similar sorts of competitive battles. We'll see if hopefully not, but maybe a tough summer.
- [27:52]
B
Yeah, no, great point. And I mean maybe this is part of the plan, but I wonder if it, if it's going to force slot allocations at o'. Hare. A return of that. Great point, Charles. All right, time now to thank our sponsors. Thanks to RTX for helping to make this podcast possible. RTX believes no challenge is too great. No question too big, no answer out of reach. That's why RTX never stops striving the RTX Global team works across Collins Aerospace, Pratt Whitney and Raytheon to inspire, innovate and drive progress for generations to come. RTX pushes the boundaries of known science and finds new ways to connect and protect our world. Visit rtx.com to learn more. We also want to thank Infinity Flight Academy, the leader in cadet academy training programs, for helping us bring the podcast to you. Whether you're looking to build a custom pipeline or strengthen your existing cadet program, Infinity Flight Academy delivers consistent airline ready results. And for those of you listening who've always dreamed of flying or know someone who has, Infinity Flight has trained thousands of students, many now flying for major airlines around the world. Learn more at infinityflight.com, infinity Flight Academy, where future airline pilots take off.
- [29:12]
C
In addition, thanks to Cirium for supporting Airlines Confidential. Cirium offers the most accurate and precise data and analytics to enable airlines to optimize planning, operations and passenger services. The right intelligence drives operational efficiencies, enables you to predict market shifts, and helps airlines respond quickly to maximize revenue, manage costs and seize commercial opportunity. Visit Cirium, that's Cirium.com for more. And we also want to thank Ontario International Airport, which is celebrating a decade of local control. Thanks to public support, the local community reclaimed ont, revived it as a vital gateway in Southern California and ensured the airport is ready to soar even higher in the years to come. Visit flyontario.com 10 to learn the story and find out how you can join the year long celebration of how a decade of local control has turned ONT into one of California's fastest growing and most economical airports.
- [30:20]
B
All right, let's bring in the man on the hot seat, David Seymour. David Seymour, chief Operating Officer at American Airlines, is no stranger to Airlines Confidential, and we are very appreciative that he's back on this week to talk about the difficult stretch American's operation had in the last week. David's airline career began in 1999 and various jobs led him to be named COO in 2020. He's an army veteran, a former Airborne infantry officer. David holds a Master's of Management in Marketing and Transportation from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematical Science of Operations Research from the US Military Academy. David, welcome back. I'm not sure you've had much sleep the past week, but we really appreciate your time very much.
- [31:10]
D
No Scott, hey, appreciate you having me on. And yeah, we've caught up in the sleep already, but I got a great team working for me.
- [31:18]
B
Excellent. So we had this giant, brutal storm affecting the eastern two thirds of the country. I'm not sure in my lifetime I ever remember a storm that bad. Well, I guess I do remember temperatures colder in Dallas, but it was bad anyway. American had by far the most cancellations among US Carriers on Thursday. Six days in there were still cancellations, even though most of the rest of the world was back to normal, more or less what happened that American seems to have had a more difficult time handling this storm and recovering from this storm.
- [31:57]
D
Well, you know, Scott, I'm glad you're having this conversation. I appreciate you reaching out and some of the comments you made about the storms. It was in my 26 years in the industry, probably the most disruptive weather event that the airline I've worked for here has felt and there's no doubt about it. And I think it's the intensity. And as you talk about cold temperatures, we've dealt with cold temperatures. As you said, you live in Dallas, we've dealt with cold temperatures. It's the cold temperatures, but more so the precipitation that came in. Yeah, but I want first I say is, I just want to thank the team we had. You know, a lot of people fought the elements across, not just dfw, but, you know, other hubs to manage through this. Now, why I would tell you is it is more disproportionately affected American is because the path of this storm, and that's what we've got to look at, hit five of our nine hubs and it wasn't like breaks in between. And what we've dealt with in the past is, you know, we'll have big snowstorms that hit the Northeast or they'll hit the mid Atlantic or they'll hit Dallas. I don't think we've had anyone that's hit all of them in such close succession and literally they were hitting the next one before they were out of the other city. It was that, that level of intensity. And I'll tell you, that compounding effect hitting those multiple hubs multiple days is really what create a much more disproportionate impact to American Airlines. And I would say very acutely with dfw because as you well know, we're still trying in the DFW metroplex, trying to dig out out of this, you know, you know, long after, you know, the storm has passed, but still dealing with, you know, two or three days into it and we're still dealing with, you know, school closures. Yet we had 60 degree temperatures yesterday. So I think that's really kind of what, what hit and, and I'll talk just a little bit about it. Why dfw? Well, dfw, when it started to hit on Friday night, you know, we, you expected this really to be a one day weather event. But we over the course of Saturday dealt with weather and conditions that made it nearly impossible to operate. Over the course of the day, we had 10 unique weather conditions and they changed 23 times over the course of that time. And you as a pilot, I know, will appreciate this, but we, for a period of just over nine hours, cumulatively nine hours, but not in one stretch, could not legally or safely take aircraft off because we had no holdover time at all because of the type of precipitation that we're getting. So you could have the holdover time.
- [34:45]
B
You mean after you de ice.
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D
After you de ice. So after you de ice and anti ice, you have a period of time in which the aircraft has to depart, otherwise you have to go through the process again. But there are conditions as you get into ice pellets, freezing drizzle or you know, moderate freezing drizzle that you have zero hold over time. You can't de ice and take off. And that's what we dealt with for that period of time in dfw. And then the next day on Sunday, you know, as the infrastructure here is trying to get itself moving again, getting people, not just our own team members and crew members to airports, but the folks that you need to run the airport, we struggled. And DFW for the better part of Sunday was at one quarter of its normal blue sky, clear day capacity. And that limits you when you're dealing with an airline, our size at dfw.
- [35:44]
B
Does size affect all that? It seemed to me that it may be the complexity of dfw, the size, the number of airplanes on the ground, the huge, you know, the tarmac areas that aren't getting plowed and all that. It's different from say, Love Field, which also had kind of the same weather but seemed to to operate more. Although the Dallas Mavericks couldn't get out Sunday either.
- [36:13]
D
Yeah, well, glad you pointed out because that still makes the news here locally. Yeah, so they were impacted, but I tell you, it's, it's the complexity. Well, you know, one of the steps we did is we knew what the weather, type of weather was going to come in Friday night and we moved a lot of aircraft out, not all of them, but a lot of aircraft out of dfw. Now, unique to doing this because we put travel waivers out well in advance for our customers to give them opportunities. But instead of just ferrying those aircraft out to locations that, you know, have better weather, we actually created flights for those, and we staffed those with flight attendants, and we offered 6,000 seats. And we did this not only for DFW, but we also did it for Charlotte, which saw the weather a day later. We operated this out to provide some additional lift to our customers whose flights would have been canceled or were already canceled for Saturday. We got them and created opportunity, which a lot of people took advantage of. But. But the size. Yeah, it is the size, but it's also just the infrastructure. And those are the same things you're going to see. Love Field is a, you know, has. Is a much smaller airport than dfw, both in geographical space, but in total operations. And that's why you didn't see it as much. You know, I know local media was talking about the number of flights, you know, were canceled at DFW versus Love Field, but there are a lot more flights at dfw, and just if you just look at absolute numbers, they're always going to be a little bit smaller. But I think the challenge, again, you have with Love Field is it's a smaller part of that network, in the overall network of the main carrier there. DFW for us, is nearly 30% of our operation. And then when you add in our Charlotte operation, you're getting close to, you know, 50% of our total operation that's impacted, and they were both impacted at the same time. And then as we were working our way out of those, then we get DCA that for a period of time was shut down, no operations there at all. Philadelphia that shut down because of no operations and the weather they're dealing with. And you get into some of the New York City markets that actually ground to a halt as well, to include one of the airports being notam closed for a period of time.
- [38:29]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:31]
C
Well, I'll tell you. Hey, David, this is Charles. I'll jump in here, but. And I'm coming. I know you guys are in Dallas, I'm in Virginia beach, and we were in the storm last week, and we've got one coming this week, this weekend as well as we're recording this, I wanted to ask as well about the flight crew aspect of this. We've seen reports from AA flight attendants in particular that they were stranded in hotels through this and sleeping in airports and also seemingly had difficulty communicating with your crew scheduling team. And when I take a step back, we saw a lot of the same Challenges with Southwest when they had their 2022 meltdown at Christmas. And that was a very similar event to what you described, where they first were hit in Denver, a large base for them, and then Midway was hit and the cascading effects in their network hit. But Delta in the CrowdStrike event a couple of years ago had similar challenges. And I go back even to the JetBlue Valentine's Day, and whenever that was 2008 or 9, there were, you know, there's been a root of all of these, of the crew scheduling teams getting overwhelmed and perhaps the technology not keeping up and folks having a hard time, you know, connecting, you know, with. With the crew schedulers. Was that a big problem here for you guys as well, or am I reading too much into it?
- [39:53]
D
Well, I would say probably reading a little bit much into it. What I'll tell you is our technology that we used did not fail. It worked. I would tell you throughout the whole event, we did not lose track of our crew members in our system, which I think you alluded to. Others might have.
- [40:10]
C
Those others did. Absolutely.
- [40:12]
D
But the challenge is it was an evolving storm and keeping up with it. So we were going through rounds of cancellations trying to keep up. And that sheer volume gets you to the point of how do you keep up with the repair? And we actually then had to bring in. And we brought in, I was in our IOC over the course of some of those periods there brought in extra staff to help out with it. But it's a sheer volume. I mean, it's the largest amount of cancels this airline has ever done in that short of a period of time. But that's what we also the same technology we use to repair. And what I tell you is, as we got through this, and I know Scott, you talked about you had cancellations on Thursday. Well, our cancellations really on Thursday, the vast majority of them were related to some more weather that hit dca. And we had to. We had to thin that schedule only because of the capacity. So I would not necessarily call them the FERN events. It was an aftermath of another storm that passed through there. But we made our last cancellations related to fern late night Tuesday going into Wednesday. And that was all. And at that point, we were done and repaired again. When we call repaired. We were done with our solution in ioc. We were done communicating with our crew members and what their new assignments were. It's just that you'll have balance cancellations as you do that repair process, and there'll be a little bit of a tail but our tail was really short coming out of this. Now, in terms of. I've seen the media reports about crew members sleeping, but we have. I've asked the team on multiple occasions because there's a mechanism for which they have to, you know, they can report these issues. I will tell you that our crew members probably waited for hotel rooms longer than normal under normal irregular op situation. But over the course of that time, we secured 6,000 additional hotel rooms in our hub locations in advance. Knowing that we would have some cancellations, that we would have to get them hotel rooms. We went to a manual process and used that 1100 times to get hotel rooms for our crew members. So I tell you, I haven't seen the reports of them sleeping on floors and all that. I will tell you that they waited longer. And I think, Scott, you brought it up in your initial comments. People waited longer to get the hotel rooms, to get their new schedule, revised schedule. That's sheer volume. But the fact that we came up as quick as we did once the storm had passed shows that we have the capability, but our technology worked as it should.
- [43:01]
B
Interesting. One of the things that we heard from Southwest in that Christmas meltdown and the after action reports, they realized their technology was inadequate. But one of the issues was by the time the software tools developed a recovery plan, it was already out of date. You know, it was toast because weather had changed so much so quickly. But that wasn't really the case for you. You feel like you recovered as quickly as possible.
- [43:32]
D
Yeah, we did. No, we did. I mean, again. Well, I always tell you there's always opportunity to do better, but it's weather and understanding and how you factor in the. What I'll tell you in a lot of cases was infrastructure issues that added to the complexity that we had. I jokingly say to people in DFW that our method of clearing streets and roads and ramps and taxiways sometimes is radiant heat, the sun. And that's something we've got to have those discussions about. We've got to get better capabilities in place. Even though it doesn't happen often. We've got to be ready for that. But our technology worked. It was always in there. And we've been an early adopter in that years ago about putting the technology in to not only manage a rebuilding the schedule, but manage our crew rebuilds. But again, it was just sheer, sheer volume that we dealt with.
- [44:30]
B
Yeah, yeah. The roadways, by the way, are interesting. DFW has so many elevated roadways that ice on those is probably a huge issue. Just for moving around the airport?
- [44:43]
D
Yeah, no, and we had the same thing, but we, you know, again we DFW has, you know, has some of those, those areas that we had too. But that's again, something that we, we have to anticipate and learn from it. And there are other techniques that other airports have used. I mean, Charlotte's not that far off the mark, but Charlotte, you know, I think in some cases fared slightly better than DFW in terms of how they managed.
- [45:07]
B
So do you feel like by what, by the end of the week all the luggage gets returned to people, things are back to normal?
- [45:16]
D
Yeah, they're doing the final clearing out of the, of the locations right now and we're, we're well on our way. The numbers are coming down rapidly because we're, we're using all the available lift and we're running full schedule that we're using all that available lift to reach out to our customers and get that baggage redelivered.
- [45:36]
B
Good.
- [45:37]
C
David, I'm just curious, I mean I really. And kudos to you and your team and hopefully you get some rest here. Collectively, the team at aaags, I feel for you. As you guys go back into a hot wash and review this, are there any long term fixes or changes that you think you would need to make or is this just, I mean, there's all the talk in the media of, you know, more and more severe weather and so forth. I mean, you know, I'm just thinking about perhaps more reserve pilots or crews, aircraft. I know those things are expensive or, you know, other things or is it just grind through it when the next event comes?
- [46:14]
D
Charles, good question. What I tell you is we, you know, and I've told the team as we were doing some discussion about it this morning, you know, we start our hot wash in the middle. We've got to be very clear on what, what we learned, where the opportunity is. You've been around the industry for quite some time. You know, there's always an opportunity to do a little bit better. What I tell you is continue to look at our, you know, make continued investments in our technology in terms of how we communicate because getting more airplanes is just going to get in the way. Our problem wasn't having airplanes. Our problem was we couldn't take the aircraft off or a better part of it. You know, when you, when you get challenged at these levels sometimes, you know, again, not only are we disruptive to our customers, but our crew members need to move on those aircraft as well. So they're not getting to position. So those are things that, you know, having more crew members isn't necessarily going to do it because the crux of what happened here is we had two of our major hubs, five hubs, but two of our two largest, that for periods of time could not move. And so but we're going to invest in better tools to communicate with our crew members. We're working certainly on better technology for our customers in terms of looking for opportunity to rebooking. I like what we did in advance of putting the travel waiver out. We had over 100,000 customers that took advantage of that did something unique by creating flights, extra flying to create opportunity for those that could leave before the storm to get them out. Also opportunities for people to route themselves around the hubs that were impacted. And then we're going to look at, you know, better tools so we can manage, you know, even more volume and you know, and how do we integrate that with hotels. But again, I go back to the hotels, our crew members were also depending where they're at. We're fighting for the same inventory of hotels that some of our displaced customers were.
- [48:11]
C
Hey, I'm curious David too. Over the holidays about a month ago, you guys have announced a new banked structure moving from, I think it's 13 to nine banks at DFW. Do you think that. Well, I'm sorry, I think I said it the other way around. Concentrated to 13, a more spread out, less peaked bank structure. Would that help? Would that drive better OTP if you were in that 13 bank structure, you know, last week or.
- [48:42]
D
No, I, no I don't. Because as delayed as you're going to be, the bank structure, once you get in these major storms and charges, you know, this is that we, once you get into major weather events like this, you don't have structure. But that said, the 9 to 13 bank adjustment we're doing to DFW is going to, I think going to be a huge improvement because it's not so much taking, it's spreading. The flying out creates more reliability in the system, your on time performance. Because really what we're going to be focusing on is getting aircraft to arrive closer to a zero than an A14 gives our customers more opportunity to make their connecting flight, make their ensure that their bag gets to their connecting flight. So we're really excited as we, as we get ready to deploy that and then also the investments that we've made in adding block time to the system to again really focus in on how we're taking care of our customer Want to give our customer the maximum amount of time on the flight they booked. Particularly the connecting customers that we deal with in DFW and Charlotte in Miami and all of our hubs give them the opportunity to get to their connecting flight in a very seamless manner.
- [49:57]
B
So I think that leads into one of the things I wanted to ask you about which is the Wall Street Journal rankings this year because you and I used to talk about this annually when I, when I was doing the scorecard. American tied for last place this year with Frontier. You had the highest percentage of canceled flights next to last in mishandled baggage and all of that. So not so good in non time arrivals and long delays. How do you, how do you change that? Is it, it's got to be more than just the, the bank structure, right?
- [50:31]
D
Well, I mean the bank structure is going to help because you know dfw, we made huge improvements in Charlotte. I think if you look at the Charlotte operation, we've made a lot of progress there. They posted some of their best ever numbers in terms of on time performance, baggage handling made a lot of headway in that one. DFW is the area that we've got to do and that's why we've, we're, we're taking this approach to more block time but also the 9 to 13 bank adjustment. What I always say is, you know, with DFW as large as is is it sets the tone for the day for the whole airline and that improvement will pay a lot of dividends across the system. So I have all the confidence that the improvements we make as we make the adjustment from 9 to 13 with the added block time that we're going to improve our overall ratings across the board.
- [51:28]
B
Good.
- [51:28]
C
That's great. And certainly David, wish you and the team all the success. I mean, I know firsthand how difficult that is and we're all pulling for you. If I could just squeeze in just one other question. I was thinking about you guys just here. In the past couple of weeks, both American and United have announced pretty large schedule increases at o' Hare that are starting up I guess now and then. Really? United announcing this past week they're going to ramp to 750 peak flights this summer. Are you concerned about just operational reliability at o' Hare and what that may do for the network and your overall goals or have you had a chance? You've probably been probably too, too busy and too focused on this week's operation to give you to be fair, but just curious about your thoughts about o' Hare and OTP as both you and your competitor are growing.
- [52:21]
D
Yeah. What I tell you is very committed to Chicago as, as a hub. We've been there for, you know, since the beginning. And so look. Yeah, so what I would tell you is, is that, you know, when we're putting the schedule and we are very focused on how that schedule is operated reliably and we're going to continue to be focused in that no differently than we we are at DFW and all the efforts that we've done in Charlotte to get the on time performance there. So we're going to put a schedule in that we can operate. Got a great team up there, a lot of resources here at our headquarters here working to ensure that is a very operable schedule.
- [53:03]
B
So I'm curious, sort of big picture for the whole industry and I think this is, has been brewing for several years now that climate change is changing the way airlines operate and maybe customer expectations of how airlines can fly through storms or can't fly through storms or recover or whatever. Is there a big picture issue here for the whole industry that says, you know, the weather is getting more severe and we're going to need to change things?
- [53:42]
D
Well, I mean, I think, you know, one could, you know, if you look at it, you could come up with a perception that it's getting more severe. I don't know. I think, you know, again we're growing volume. You know, the weather could have been just as severe. But you know, as you have more flights at more airports, that's just going to compound it. And when I tell you, I mean the investments that, you know, the administration's making in the new, you know, air traffic control system I think is going to give us more efficiency in the airspace. And that's what we've got to look, look at is how we can handle, manage more aircraft in the air, get more aircraft in the air and then on the, on the ground, on the arrival side that's going to come with better efficiency and there's some good technology that is available that not is not in use that I think could help that. So I'm not sure I'd say that the weather is more severe. It certainly would give the appearance in some locations. But I think as we have more traffic, if you know, 10, 15 years ago when you weren't flying as much, you had some resilience in the system because you could absorb more volume and you don't have that now. But that's where I think the technologies come into place. Our ability right now to solve irregular ops problems and challenges that we have. And it happens every day. Just the scale is something that 25 years ago I could only dream of, and now we're living in it and we have that capability. We can fix our solution. I go back and look at what we did this past week with Fernando. Our ability to rebuild crew sequences in the time frame we did and be able to say that, yeah, the last elements of the storm left dfw, you know, Sunday. Still dealing with some of the ramifications of that, but we put our last cancellations in for Fern Tuesday night. Okay, that is incredible. You know, again, it doesn't lessen the impact it had on our customers, on our team members, our crew members. But that is what we're going to continue to focus attention on, is how we manage that and how we can do better at predicting it. I mean, are there better models to predict weather impacts? Those are an area I think that I know several carriers to include ourselves are talking about.
- [56:10]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay. Hey, David, thank you so much. This has been great. It's really good to find out more about what's really going on and all that you had to deal with. Appreciate it very much.
- [56:26]
D
Okay, thank you very much for having me.
- [56:28]
B
And we will be right back with more on airlines.
- [56:31]
A
Confidential promotional support provided by the ultimate Avgeek website, theercive.net a vast collection of airline memorabilia, timetables, route maps, rare cabin and airport photos, special flights and more, all@theairchive.net the hub of air transport history.
- [56:48]
B
Thanks again to David for really honest, insightful conversation. What'd you think, Charles? Any takeaways?
- [56:55]
C
Well, I'll tell you, and first, just really appreciate Dave. We recorded that on Friday, you know, still as he was in the heat of battle, in recovery, but, you know, picking up the pieces from Fern and with more weather coming. So really appreciate him just taking the time. Being the COO of any airlines, tough. And certainly for an airline like American of that size and scale, I mean, it's a tough, tough job. And as we said earlier in the podcast, Americans had a tough week, you know, so just really appreciate Dave for, for, for coming on and joining. But you know, I, I've got to say, I, I, I didn't get the sense and more, this is more just kind of, you know, tone and, and, and voice from the interview. I mean, you know, that I didn't get the sense and maybe that maybe I'm reading it wrong, but that there's a strong effort or plan underway to really turn things around. And I reflect back on, and you asked the question about the Wall Street Journal surveys, but American was in the last place and, you know, tied for Frontier and not a place that, you know, they should be content to be in. And I didn't, I didn't get a sense that he fought, that is maybe as strongly as I was hoping to hear, you know, from, from him, that, hey, we're going to turn this around, it's not acceptable, you know, etc. Etc. But, but, you know, I also know you can kind of be caught in the fog of war and he's had a tough week as well, but really just feel for him. And when you think about the performance from the weather and then reflect on the full year performance that the Wall Street Journal survey reflects, which is, you know, a full year of cancellations and complaints and mishandled bags, etc, you know, they've dug quite a hole and they've got a lot of work to do to dig out of it.
- [58:31]
B
Yeah. And you know, the thing that, and I think this has been a long term issue at American. I'm not sure the whole team, the whole company is geared up to make that change. Right. I think, as I've said, it's a cultural change. And I'm reminded of Gordon Bethune saying to his employees, which part of the watch don't you need? Right? You need every single part of the watch to be working for the watch to keep time. And, and that's the issue here. And, and David Seymour can, can, you know, add block time at, you know, and, and spread out the banks at DFW and do things to fix the operation. But that's not it alone. There needs to be, you know, it's got to be the flight attendants, it's got to be the, the catering guy, you know, getting the, the truck there on time. It's got to be the, the, the baggage handlers, the everybody and, and just a whole major effort to say we're going to run a better airline and it's going to take everybody. And you know, I, I agree with you. I think however it is led, it needs to be, you know, this is not just about adding block time or, or, you know, spreading out the banks at dfw. This is changing the company, the culture.
- [60:07]
C
And I mean, almost Southwest, like in the turnaround. Different, but, but yeah, major and love the Gordon. We managed to have two citations of Gordon in the turnaround.
- [60:17]
B
He did it right?
- [60:18]
C
Absolutely. No, absolutely did. I was proud to be a, a very young junior part of that team. And you're right, I mean he did use that watch analogy along with many others and always very colorfully well. But hey again, just, just thanks today for making the time because I mean he has a tough thankless role and for for Jo late in the Friday afternoon to hear directly from him how things were going, you know, I thought was really was really valuable and hopefully our listeners.
- [60:44]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely.
- [60:45]
C
I'll tell you. Scott, let's go to the mailbag. I know we've got a few things here. The first, first message is from is from Billy in Oregon who asks a really broad question. So he starts thank you for producing Airlines Confidential. Recent episodes like Doug Parker's Pricing School and Don Carty's Porter introduction to name a few. Just wow, what an education from some really bright minds. I look forward to your podcast every week. As they say, what a time to be alive. Let me continue, Scott, please. Billy continues. I am curious, is there room in the market for more North American airlines? Is it a zero sum game in which new entrants must necessarily take market share or spill from existing airlines? What underdeveloped revenue opportunities are available to non network carriers without established loyalty slash credit card programs? And then you know, Billy cites the 4% Q4 margin for Breeze. Yawn, he says. And the big one, the ULCC model seems dead. What is the airline you'd launch if someone handed you $100 million instead of say setting it on fire with Avelo? There's a lot there, Scott, from Billy. But what do you think?
- [62:06]
B
Well, if someone handed me 100 million, I'd invested in the S and P 500. Billy, not an airline. You remind me of the old how
- [62:16]
C
do you, oh gosh, how do you
- [62:19]
B
become a millionaire in the airline business? Start with a billionaire.
- [62:22]
C
Billionaire.
- [62:22]
B
Yeah. It's interesting. The trend in the airline business has been consolidation, not new startups. I do think, think one day we'll get back to a cycle where there is room for more new startups who can come in with low costs and better service than entrenched incumbents. But we're probably several years, if not more from that. It's curious in my history of Aviation class just started up this past weekend at the University of Colorado Denver. You know, we go through the history and it's often new technology that brings new opportunity and new ways to transport people. And so, you know, I can see that happening again. But we're not there yet. But you know, it's supersonic aircraft that's economical and viable. Blended wing aircraft like Jet zero or new fuel or there will be some technological development that will be disruptive and create the opportunity for new entrants. But today I just don't think there are many virgin markets to be found and no new technology yet. Today the incumbents have lots of tools and resources to squash new entrants and today we probably have an overabundance of capacity rather than a shortage of capacity. So that's what I think. What do you think, Charles? You know people, you see new business proposals. Is there room for something new?
- [63:56]
C
Yeah, look Scott, I agree with you and echo the S&P 500 advice there as well for Billy, I would say I don't see room in the immediate future, meaning like in the next year or two. But the space that you didn't mention and I'm kind of excited about is the EVTOL space. This is the electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles and there's a whole bunch of companies. I mean a few of the better known ones are Archer and Joby Wisk is another one. And these are going to be four seaters effectively that you know, will fly. Some will connect into airports. I mean they can, but they're short haul routes, they're electric, quick turnaround, short distances. And I can see that opening up new markets, I mean new own DS if you will. It just haven't existed before. And I'm kind of, you know, I'm kind of excited about that. I mean I don't think it's going to be as large of a market or as large an opportunity as maybe some of those startups are pitching, but I do think it's going to come and I think I'm kind of watching that one and excited about it. So certainly in that venture capital, sort of unproven, you know, sort of business model space, but something that yeah, kind of fascinates me. And I know Oscar Munoz is one who's closely involved in Archer, I believe, but he's a believer in that and I enjoy learning from him about that part of the industry.
- [65:16]
B
Yeah, it's very interesting. It's a great point. You know, my, my one big question about that is not the technology but where the pilots are going to come from and what's going to be required. If that's an airline oriented thing where you're going to need 1500 hours, that's probably a deal killer. Now if it can be take a 300 hour pilot and they can get hours to get up to 1500, become sort of a feeder training ground, then I think that that's a whole lot
- [65:52]
C
more viable lots to be proven out and decided determined in that space. But it's really one that I'm watching.
- [65:58]
B
Yeah. All right, here's one for you. Charles Otto from Orlando asks hi Scott, what level of investment is required to start commercial service at an airport that does not have it? And what sort of agreements do airlines have to make with local policymakers to make this happen? For some background, I attended the University of Alabama for my undergraduate as an out of state student it was often frustrating to make the drive up to Birmingham or more often all the way over to Atlanta to fly home. The city of Tuscaloosa does have an airport, tcl, but it does not have commercial service. This is not due to lack of Runway size. The football team charters A757 in and out every week in the fall and I do not believe that this is for lack of demand either. On any given day of the week there are multiple group chat messages and social media posts looking for a ride to Birmingham. A majority of the 40,000 students are from out of state and that doesn't even speak of the local businesses such as major manufacturing facilities of Mercedes Benz and Michelin as well as the University itself. Just down the road in Mississippi is GTR between Columbus and Starkville which has three times daily service to major hubs, two times daily to Atlanta and one flight daily to Dallas Fort Worth. I believe TCL has the demand to support a similar regional flight to a major hub. A quick hop to Atlanta would find success or American or United flight to Chicago would also be successful. I also don't think I need to elaborate on the premiums these carriers would be able to charge on the Friday slash Sunday around a home football game where they could probably fill a 757. I'm just curious what the barriers to entry are in a situation like this where TCL has not had commercial service since the 90s and would love to hear you and your co host thoughts on if this demand theory of mine actually holds water. Thanks Otto.
- [67:58]
C
Yeah Scott, hey listen, I'm happy to take a stab at this and curious to hear your thoughts as well. So I think firstly Otto, I mean you know, as you probably know and our listeners would know, the general trend in the industry has been towards up gauging of aircraft propeller. You know the 30 seat propellers became 50 seat RJs, 50 seat RJ, 70 seats and so the smallest airports and communities have lost service to regional hubs and so I think that that's likely what's happened in the case of Tuscaloosa as well, to answer your question specifically, what does it take? I mean, typically you need a terminal, you need TSA to come in and the other federal agencies to open it up. And I'm not sure what the situation there is in Tuscaloosa for that, but those regulatory and staffing challenges, you know, can be substantial. And real airports also will typically come in with some sort of a financial package for airlines to start service. And that could be in the form of a revenue guarantee. It can be, you know, some sort of financial risk sharing because the airline will forecast losses and the local community will need to help support that to, you know, prove it's a bit of sort of, you know, put your money where your mouth is and, and prove it out. You know, in this area, broadly by airports, is what's called air service development. And most big airports have teams that look at data. And one thing they do, and this, this would be, I think, appropriate in the Tuscaloosa case. They'll look at cell phone data, you know, anonymized, but to see who is flying into, for example, Birmingham and who's flying into Atlanta and how many of them actually end up in Tuscaloosa. And so you can, you can actually now track that in quite sophisticated ways and see what the airport's catchment area is and, and perhaps build new, new services and things. So just a couple. Yeah, I've seen some really cool data and reports that, that, oh, airports in Florida will use it to promote European service because I'll say, hey, actually the people are flying into Orlando, but they're ending up on one in Fort Myers or in Tampa, and they use that to promote direct service as an example. But listen, you know, a couple of other things. I mean, I know Tuscaloosa is about an hour drive from Birmingham, about three hours from Atlanta. And this reminds me a lot of West Lafayette, which has an airport on the campus of Purdue University. They too have had a lack of commercial service for a couple of decades and just in the last 18 months or maybe two years regained commercial service. And they've got two commuter flights into O'. Hare. And, you know, so I've been kind of excited to watch that. And very similar setup from West Lafayette, one hour drive to Indianapolis and a three hour drive to Chicago. And the only other thing that I would point out here for Otto is that while the 757 can operate in and out of Tuscaloosa, it's a pretty short Runway. The main Runway there is 6,498ft. And I think a 50 seat RJ might have some operational challenges. I mean, I just, that that would be one thing to keep in mind that the, the 50 seat RJs do need, generally speaking, longer runways than say a 757. They just have worse Runway performance. So anyway, I, I, I think you've got, your idea has some merit, you know, and, and, but it would require a lot of work and, and, and I wish you much luck, Otto. I don't know if anyone's working on this or not actively, but, but, but if Purdue can do it, I'm sure an SEC powerhouse like Alabama could do it too.
- [71:29]
B
Yeah, no, it's so interesting be worth looking into more. I'd be curious, you know, who's, who's running the airport and is there a relationship with Birmingham? Is there concern in Birmingham that that would cannibalize their air service? Tuscaloosa, you know, it's a state university. You know, I think the university could have some, some clout with, you know, with Delta. Hey, Delta, if you want to be our preferred carrier, get some flights into Tuscaloosa. But you know, who, who knows? I do think it's a, it's a cool idea and there is some merit in, and universities. I mean my experience, it works great if there's a state capital there and you get the state capital business, Tallahassee or wherever. But universities can be tough because the travel is so peaky. Right. Everybody wants to go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but when it's exam week, nobody's traveling. Right. So you've got some very busy periods and you've got some very not busy periods, and that can be tough for airlines.
- [72:49]
C
Great point.
- [72:50]
B
Well, that's all for another edition of Airlines Confidential. Thank you, David Seymour. Thank you, Charles Duncan. It's been great. Really enjoy hashing all this with you. Good, bad, ugly, horrifying. And I hope we brought some brilliance to it as well.
- [73:10]
C
Love it. Well, hey, listen, Scott, always a pleasure. Thanks so much and thanks to our listeners for listening all the way to this point. So long everyone, and hope you all have a great week. Stay warm out there.
- [73:20]
B
Go Tar Heels and let's go, Duke.
- [73:25]
A
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