Thanks for that excellent article BB (and your earlier post).

This was written in 1998, but was right on the money, and the 'virtual airlines' (RJ's and JV's) have only grown since then.

If we could find this Mann person who wrote this, I would love to see an update, and hear his ideas for the future. Funny how Express went away, once we took a 42% pay cut and agreed to do ALL Mainline flying at Express rates!

When it comes to Airline Managment, this has always been a "Monkey See, Monkey Do" industry. Ever since Frank Lorenzo took Eastern apart, other Managements have learned how to play the Bankruptcy Card to get what they want.

But... looking foreward, Emirates, Singapore and the Indians are growing with new, big, airplanes, and will be stealing away some of every US Carrier's International traffic, as they can under cut us all, with thier lower labor costs and better new aircraft financing deals. And China is starting to build big airplanes as well.

So where is our US Congress, who could write laws, to protect our Jobs?

Oh, they're busy taking "Re election Campaign Contributions" from China, India and the UAE, no dout!