We’ve heard all about the soaring profits at airlines this past week but I wonder if many have noticed the other element in the news:  new flights being added at various legacy and SuperLegacy hubs. 

So far, these new flights have all the appearance of being targeted towards building core strengths at various hubs and focus cities.  American Airlines is building LAX (although mostly through American Eagle flights) for instance and United and American are starting long haul flights from LAX to Shanghai, too.

While we’ve seen very modest capacity growths in the first 2 quarters indicating that airlines were just (barely) keeping pace with demand, this most recent quarter finds announcements that indicate that everyone is trying to nudge themselves towards a bit more growth than before. 

Let me point out that even Southwest’s intentions on buying the 737-800 is a form of capacity growth.  They’ll use that aircraft on routes where there ability to fly frequency is constrained. 

The signs are there but it’s the 4th quarter results and announcements that should signal a trend.  We won’t really know where things are headed until announcements on intentions for next summer are made.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax