I agree that it sucks and I don't like it one bit. And I appreciate sharper guys like yourself being vigilant in an industry that is rife with slippery slopes.

I don't want to minimize what happened with this and I want it remedied via ALPA if possible and via other avenues if not, but I don't think we should side the slippery slope trend vector to the worst possible conclusion as if its an fate sealed inevitability. Every time we take the runway and power up, the trend vector implies that we will be going mach 20 by the time we get to destination, and every time we slow 10 knots it means we are on the path to a catestrophic stall. Those rates of acceleration don't continue for very long of course, so while we need to monitor the trend vector, we have to look at it in its totality and logical/inevitable conclusions.

Not to mention, PCL doesn't own a single seat or block minute of DL flying as soon as their contract is up. DL management will see to that, assuming someone else is willing to underbid them, which is a pretty safe assumption.

In any case even if we don't attempt to touch the 40 jets they fly for the next 7 years or whatever their duration is, there an awful lot of large RJ's beyond what they fly that we will have to go after first either way and I hope we do.