I'm actually quite bearish on the long term outlook of the US and global economies. The present path of both is not only radically unsustainable but well into the region of reverse command. Something has to give, and that something is going to be big. When the endless trillions of ineffective debt based stimulus to solve a debt based crisis and fake lying Chinese GDP fantasy numbers (and others) all collide with reality its not going to be pretty.

My main criticism of the company's present vector mostly transcend anything to do with this TA. I've said many times we need to take it to the ULCC's hard and with no mercy. It will cost us money and profits to do so, but the long term ROI is significantly superior because that may be the difference between survival and another trip through BK. The ULCC's simply can not be allowed to fulfull even a quarter of their order books. Their growth must be stopped by any means necessary and at least one or two simply must go away. Sorry sacred cow worshipers, but its either them or us, and I'd rather it be us. There is simply not enough room for a fraction of their order books and the existing legacy airlines. Something has to give, and so far our management is gifting them capacity on a silver platter to pad short term numbers like good little B school bonus mongers.

Then there are the fantasy EGO foreign airlines. While much more of a national policy failure than a DL management issue, we need to show them there will be no quarter for one seat more of US market flying. That too will reduce today's profits but it is vital to show them we intend to go to the mat for our markets or else we will wake up tomorrow and see a fake royal bonanza land grab of 10 times the foreign airline presence we have today.

Maybe this magical 10 billion debt mark will be the turning point. I don't see our current crop of leaders having an epiphany because of it, but you never know. I think they are stuck on consolidation and synergies (more capacity reductions) which another round of will buy them another year or two of their present stratedgy "working" WRT quarterly results. After they mine that capacity and gift it to ever growing competitors, fight's on and we will be in a much weaker position relative to a much stronger and larger competitive field that we helped create.

IMO we need to start getting ruthless like the old Delta was in some markets and the old NWA was almost everywhere it flew. That's not happening, and that worries me, TA or no TA.

As for the rest of your assessment, all the reasons you suggest we take the TA WRT to the money right now makes sense, especially when coupled with the time value of money actuarials. But are the guaranteed negatives in the TA worth those undwewhelming yet meaningful but potentially short lived and temporary positives that we traded things away to get? That's the question.