Pax,

The first paragraph of my post, that you quoted, described a charter flight and then parenthetically said "not unlike Delta paying for all the DCI costs and in some cases Delta even owns the aircraft".

The idea was to compare Delta's "wet leasing" (the phrase I used in my earlier post) of DCI carrier aircraft to a charter operation. This is from Wikipedia: [I've added Delta and DCI for clarity.]

A wet lease is a leasing arrangement whereby one airline (lessor) (DCI) provides an aircraft, complete crew, maintenance, and insurance (ACMI) to an airline (Delta) [or other type of business acting as a broker of air travel] (the lessee) (Delta), which pays by hours operated. The lessee (Delta) provides fuel and covers airport fees, and any other duties, taxes, etc. The flight uses the flight number of the lessee (Delta). A wet lease generally lasts one month to two years; anything less would be considered an ad-hoc charter.

In your response you said "I know better than to think anyone could ever ride a charter flight as a non-rev."

The definitions from Wikipedia basically differentiate a wet lease from a charter on the basis of the length of the contract. Put slightly differently, Delta could be said to have long-term charter contracts with DCI carriers.

So with that explanation perhaps you can see why I feel the way I do.