Once a year, I head to Colorado to cautiously ski down the easy part of the mountain. My gear of choice has been a big fluffy yellow jacket. Upon greeting the family for the holidays, my sister’s welcome was slightly colder than the wind chill:
Yesterday, Maestrow and I were having our daily "strategic briefing" over morning coffee. Our automated news prompt, which monitors airline fleet announcements, delivered a fascinating piece of intelligence: a competitor we track is about to receive an unexpected addition of eight aircraft early next year.
This wasn't just interesting news; it was a strategic trigger. The key question immediately became: How do we find out if these new planes will be used to add new routes, or if they'll be used to shift capacity on existing ones? Manually sifting through thousands of flights at a hub airport to compare schedules would take a team of analysts hours, if not days.