Originally Posted by
Rogue24
You said you talked to Art and Sam M the CS Committee Chairman. You say that Sam was defending the fair share, and then state that is what is in the PWA. Did any of the color these two pilot gave you help you gain some perspective on what is going on? Did they answer or quell any concerns you had about what you thought was going on in these JV's?
Sam Mason does a great job for our pilots.
Back when this deal was done (and immediately appeared in peril) the CS Committee pointed out we were tracking about where we had been prior to inclusion of Alitalia in our JV. As stated in the previous post, our MEC wants to grow our flying and achieving growth was thought to be well worth the "price" (my characterization) of the expanded measurement window. At the the time it was management's stated intention to grow to 50% of the bigger pie (with AZ filling). Then the European economic decline occurred and Air France was no where near as nimble as Delta in constraining capacity. (news reports at that time reflected the stress Air France and Delta had maintaining their liason amoureuse)
Things are changing and Delta's nimble. The British economy is rebounding well and we just added a 7ER flight from Seattle to Heathrow.
As I understand it, the VA JV (which is supposed to be live by 1/1/14) is not going to be rolled into our current transatlantic JV. If this continues to be the case then it is probably better for us than adding Virgin to our share. I would argue we are splitting the Atlantic; this is not the "English Channel Joint Venture."
Also, Delta said they are not going to merge numbers in any way with Virgin. So we will be able to track the results of that operation transparently on Delta's reports. We here in the bleachers can see that game being played out. The Seattle flight is a win.
Also, we have hit our metrics ... time for a Widebody acquisition ... JMHO.