Bar,
On a side note, it is impressive to see the progression at airlines that want to perform their own flying.
NKS has upgrades under five years
Emirates looks like they are going with Direct Entry Capt's
Hawaiian has grown their pilot group by over 25% in the last year
ALK has impressive growth numbers

I said a few weeks ago that DAL is trying to find how much they can shrink before their RASM starts to hit the back side of the power curve. Last month they still saw a 14% increase in RASM. I would say that they can shrink a little further as long as it does not effect the efficency of their hub network.