The bean counters in most Airline management teams are focused on two things exclusivly; Load Factor and Cost, per available seat mile. They will lower the ticet prices to get above 85% load factor, and if that won't do it, they park the big iron and bring out the Barbie Jets, the little 50 seaters where you can't even cary on a bag. Delta now owns more Regional Jets than big jets!

When our economy was "booming" ie. the late 1990's, just before the tech bubble burst, oil was cheap ($40/bbl) and loads were high, and for a short time, every airline made money.

Now, we have the opposite; oil is expensive ($80/bbl today but you all know it was much higer a while back and could go up again) and loads are down due to unemployment and the employed people are just not spending much money on vacation type trips, and the business men can do a "Tele conference" vs. fly to a meeting.

So the bean counters want to keep the load factors up, they look at every empty seat as a "spoiled fruit", while keeping the cost per ASM down, that means, no pillows, no blankets, pay to check your bags and of course; "No SOUP FOR YOU!" NEXT!

The majors never fully recovered from the 9-11 attacks, passenger wise, and then oil went up. So in 2005 you had most Majors go bankrupt. Delta, North West, United, US Air, etc. and American was very nearly there and is again talking about it now. In Bankruptcy, the company could pretty much do what they wanted to rip up all contracts with vendors, employees, aircraft leases, airport facilties, etc. and then "Restructure" to their new look, a "Lean, Clean, No Service Machine!"

The old mantra was, "Customer Service is King!" while the new mantra is, "We're no worse than anyone else, we all suck, but your ticket is only 100 bucks!" They love to screw the last minute passenger, but if you buy in advance, it cost about the same to buy a round trip BOS-MIA ticket today as it did 25 years ago. Yet oil and all other operating costs have trippled or more in that time.

The airlines are still hurting and will be going back into bankruptcy again if oil goes back up and the economy doesn't rebound soon...