Originally Posted by
Enemyofthestate
This might be metal neutral for us, and a huge win for the corporation. The devil will be where and how that metal neutral flying goes in terms of routes. Will we share routes to the same airport, or split them up while still being neutral? I can't see DAL walking away from it's own brand in JFK while trying to be the preferred airline there. OTOH I can't see Branson ceding NYC to DAL either and focusing on subsidiary markets.
There is the potential for our flying out of JFK to be diluted while being capacity/metal neutral or balanced in a JV. This could affect NYC based ER crews adversely depending on which base picks up the flying.
Bottom line is this will be good for DAL, pilots TBD, and likely neutral at best. What I do find interesting is that this deal was tried before earlier this year, yet my MSP reps said they were never briefed on a previous attempt - that occurred just before there was the rush to our TA.
Either someone knew about this and didn't brief the LEC's, or the highly vaunted engagement with management failed to inform the MEC of this little development. I hope it is the latter because the implications of the former are troublesome.
If the goal is for VA to get back to profitability, then I'd expect to see them cut a lot of service to leisure markets and beef up the business markets. So markets like Las Vegas, Miami, Barbados, and Cancun get the axe while markets like Washington, Boston, Chicago, NY get added flights. And they don't serve ATL at all right now, so I'd expect to see a few flights added there to connect to the aforementioned leisure markets.
As for us, our LHR flights are relatively few right now, except for ATL and JFK. I don't see us expanding Delta flights a whole lot to LHR, although with the JV, you might see a new flight from, say SLC or SEA. Or maybe some deal with a city like PHL. In any event, we need our union to negotiate the appropriate protections for us.