Great reporting by the way. Curious about the 2013-2014 hiring.
Well, ours does guarantee DCI the right to grow from 255 jumbo RJs to 325. So I'd say ours.
Ah, but a merger allows you to do different things with different fleets. After all today we don't have PMDAL plus a PMNWA fleet. You could merge with Alaska, drop their 734s, trade in their 739s, add their 739ER order to ours post trade in, drop something we don't want to keep on our side, etc.
It's one way to get to 796 airplanes with no hiring needed until late 2013 to 2014 (which is what I heard from two separate LCA this week so it's being repeated*).
To use a SWA analogy, there are lots of fun ways to skin a cat, but...
circle gets the square.
*I did also listened in on a conversation a week ago about whether we'd be hiring. The management pilot said simply we're taking steps to move in that direction. for whatever that's worth.