NEWS: Ted Turns 1

Ted, the low cost spawn of United Airlines, will have its first anniversary on Saturday. United claims Ted is successful in allowing the airline to compete with the likes of JetBlue. But its hard not to see that a major thrust of the Ted plan has been in Denver where United has been locked in battle with low fare carrier Frontier Airlines. Whatever the case the whole Ted-United thing seems a bit disfunctional because of the control United exerts on its low fare spin off.

In fact spin off is a misnomer. Subsidiary or operating unit is probably more accurate. All of Ted's financials and operating results are integrated into United's bigger picture. All of Ted's operations seem to be part of a bigger attack plan driven by United. It's almost as if United is using Ted as a low fare hammer to try and drive out competition as needed. It makes it very hard to judge how well Ted is really doing and harder to discern what their focus is as an airline. So what are they going to be...break out low cost carrier or a weapon of destruction on the competition. My vote is the latter unless we see Ted spun off as truly independent airline. If Ted is spun off then we will really see what its made of.