2023

Last week I flew to Huntsville to attend the retirement party of one of the airport community's best thinkers/Airport Directors in the business - #RickTucker. Unlike many, never afraid to push the river. Never afraid to challenge the status quo. Proud to call Rick a client and a friend. Wishing you and Wanda nothing but the retirement life envisioned. The HSV community and your congregation will continue to benefit with the additional time to make lives better. You will forever be appreciated.

I was invited to give the final lecture in 16.71 yesterday. I also got to see my good friend #DaveDague. I have had the honor of giving the final lecture since 2005. #Swelbar with no guardrails on content - being challenged by the best and the brightest - will forever be a career highlight.

While at MIT a lot of research was done - whether white papers, textbooks, outside lectures, and for the Airline Industry Consortium. Most research ideas were hatched by industry events impacting stakeholders up and down the supply chain.

Capacity Discipline - the strategy employed by the Big 3, Southwest, and a few others between 2010 - 2014 was always a hot topic. MIT student #MikeWittman made it hotter. We carried Mike's work forward after he graduated and joined Amadeus in Copenhagen. For those of you not familiar with Mike's work, the dude was amazing.

Much was written about the Eras of Capacity Deployment. Between 2015 - 2019 we dubbed the era - Capacity Regeneration. Following 4 years of growth at a slower rate than that of the economy, the prisoner in the dilemma was Southwest who saw an advantage to add capacity back into the system as the ULCC sector grew aggressively.

Then 2020 - 2022, the Pandemic Era. Interesting that the era is ending as an industry benefiting from capacity discipline on steroids - no airplanes for growth. Even if there were, there are not sufficiently trained pilots to fly them.

2023 will certainly begin the post-Pandemic era of capacity deployment. Today's prisoner (caged animal) is United. Kirby has made clear that the network sector will not cede share as it did post-9/11 to others. Game on.

FOR ME IN 2023

My online writing and musings began in 2007. My vehicle was https://lnkd.in/eziYV74b. Swelblog will reappear in 2023 with a slightly different name. I was not smart enough to know that someone was seeking ransom through emails for the domain name in 2013. I did not pay and lost it.

With a book title in mind, I plan to write on a career spent observing happenings inside of various industry economic eras. My first post on Swelblog.com was 10/1/2007. I said then: I did not start this blog to win friends or influence anyone. I’m a data guy, and I’ve been studying the industry long enough to come up with some strong opinions . . . many of which aren’t popular in either boardrooms or union halls. My approach is analytical because, in my view, the numbers don’t lie.

The book will be much the same.

#swelbar