Originally Posted by DelDah Capt

....would you care to guess how powerfully competitive they've been in ATL recently?

You could ask the Aitran pilots who've seen their ATL departures fall 50% from their pre-merger peak.

Or you could ask people in cities like MIA.. CLT.. IAD.. DFW.. SRQ.. TYS.. HPN.. MDT.. HSV.. etc, etc what happened to their direct ATL serivce on SW/AT

A quick check of SWA's latest system traffic report for DEC2012 shows that passengers carried for DEC were down over 3%. PAX for the 4Q were down almost 4% and were also down 1% for the entire year.....and while most Delta pilots (including me) will complain about stagnation, Delta's latest System traffic stats released today show year over year PAX carried up nearly 1%.

The idea that SW is still a juggernaut growing like a weed is silly. They're a good solid company, but they're not out there grabbing market share like they used to. As with all mergers, 1 + 1 does not equal 2. At best, 1+1= 1.5