It's interesting you pick this airplane, the DC-9-10. As the launch customer for the type, DL put this airplane into service mainly to replace the DC-6's and CV440's as hub feed from ATL, and on some of the old CAB routes, such as ORD-EVV-MEM-ATL. DL at the time was basically a regional airline, with regulated fares and routes. This particular aircraft was configured for 2 class operation in a 62 seat layout. Delta operated only a small fleet of DC-9-10 variants, and if you look at the history of the Delta fleet, we've not been in the less than 75 seat market since the mid 70's. Going back to 1980, the smallest mainline aircraft at Delta was the DC-9-32, which I still shake my head in disbelief that we still fly to day after retiring the type (glad we do, and the 747 that we supposedly would never see in DL colors) So when you say we've lost thousands of jobs to the RJ, I'd have to disagree. It might be more accurate to say we failed to gain those jobs, but at the time, the membership didn't want them. (I recall saying to our current MEC chairman back when he was a SO rep that the RJ was something we should look at limiting or merging into our list, but at the time, most of the membership was former military, and didn't see the forest for the trees). That base is now nearly closed after the nuclear RJ blast that eventually consumed itself.
In today's world, this Delta of old wouldn't last a week. Competition from SWA, JBLU, deregulated fares, and hub frequencies from our competitors would make hash out of us. That's not to say that DL pilots couldn't or shouldn't be flying smaller airplanes into some of the cities that currently are D-con only right now. But frankly, you'd have a hard time convincing the membership as a whole that we need to recapture all 50 seat and up flying at any cost, flying that we've not had since the prop days.
The AS and HI codeshare are a completely different animal, and I agree that we have lost entirely too much at the hands of this deal, all in the name of higher revenue per seat. Many on here have realized that there are city pairs that we used to fly, and connection pairs that we are losing pax to. This is untenable and needs to be dealt with, because the future will only see more of it. How it's dealt with, though, remains up to the membership and again, will we be satisfied with the bargain?
My concern these days (although I still remain optimistic) is that any merger scenario going forward will primarily be driven by a capacity reduction prior to and following the deal, resulting in a much higher revenue environment but fewer overall jobs. We are at the tipping point now. If we bought LCC, for example, can you imagine that we would keep a CLT hub? SLC would surely fold into PHX at some point. And we'd be handing over slots at LGA and DCA to SWA and JBLU. Many of LCC's international flights would fold into the ATL and JFK operation and we'd probably see some airplanes sent back to the lessors.
AA would gain us some important markets, but we'd likely have to surrender a lot of the network to other parties, and no doubt the whole process would be centered on downsizing. So the concern of a merger and the integration process is definitely something I'm keeping in mind these days, and that is probably our biggest threat going forward, not so much the 70 seat flying.
If we do someday merge with AK, you can bet there will be bad blood over the integration, no matter how that works out, it's just too different overall to be mashed into one big happy family, like we are now, right
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