If you look at the top 30 world airlines, not one single U.S. carrier is on the list in terms of profit margins. And if you look at their capital structures, the U.S. network airlines are at the bottom of the world list. They have got over-leveraged balance sheets and we calculate they come up about $8 billion short in revenue. It is a revenue problem.

Is it? Possibly at least in part but I think that the underlying problem is that the assumptions made by management over decades, like those of other U. S. industries (notably, the automobile industry) haven’t been borne out. The remedy for bad management is good management, not more revenue.

If you go back those decades and look at the assumptions, you see that many of them were by managers who didn’t give a damn about the airline industry. That’s particularly true of United, which was run by a hotel man during a critical period.

There’s an old saw that, when you’re in a hole, stop digging. Neither the U. S. airline nor the U. S. automotive industries have stopped digging yet.