Originally Posted by gloopy

I appreciate that conservative approach. I really do. But there's not going to be an "economic turnaround" here or in Europe anytime soon. Yes there could be some sugar rush highs along the way from sudden influxes of monopoly money but the debt crash after will be worse than the high feels by far, especially once a nation (US and EU in this case, as well as China and others) reaches the backside of the curve WRT the sustainability of paying it back, particularly when interest rates start rising by force (i.e. treasuries failing at auction at prevailing rates and having to be raised substantially and/or the inability to defer/"monetize" such massive debt levels while the spending...which will NOT stop no matter what, for many political reasons...hitting the real 'on the street' money supply as soon as its printed).

IOW, the present level and trajectory of this generational debt crisis puts it well outside any typical "market cycle" nonsense. There will be pain, it will last a long time and it will be severe. The good news in it all is there will be winners and losers. China is still net growth IMO but their bubble popping will have devistating consequences for them and any of their "business partners" like the US. The EU is in even bigger touble than we are and the ponzi scheme gulf airlines are already scrambling to form alliances which was considered beneath them just a handful of pages of the calendar ago. Their comical collective order book depends on massive cabotage and failure of US and EU airlines to manifest itself and IMO won't even come close to being fufilled.

There will be opportunities in the downturn for strong carriers with a comprehensive network and a solid balance sheet. How we handle that is still very much up in the air. Will we continue to shrink to profitability, thus gifting capacity relief to others? Or will we be able to compete and win as other airlines reduce and some fade away?

So far, with billion+ dollar profits since 2010 like you've mentioned, we've shrunk over 500 pilots and are still "overstaffed" because we've chosen to fund the capacity of domestic LCC's and gift capacity to AF/KLM as we reduce far faster than they have with the 3 year blank check we gave them and the west coast and everything to and from it continue to get greener and greener and greener.

I like the potential out there for DAL. There will be opportunities in the coming years and some of them will be big. But I don't like some aspects of the trend vectors we're seeing. In the end a year's difference in hiring won't make a dent in the careers of the DL pilot group as long as the total hired ends up about the same. That's the multi million dollar (career) question though.