Originally Posted by
gloopy
Even if all that is true, your baseline assumption is that AA/UA will come in with such sweet offers...that further assumes DL won't at least match or exceed...and DL will wake up with no regionals. That is rediculous and will never happen.
What I really want to know is what is the fate of the 2005 SKYW debacle and how is that going to play out for DL. Regardless of their "second cheapest" mandate or contractual renewals, who owns the gates especially if they decide to leave? Can they use current DCI gates for their IndyAir2.0 fantasy experiment (that will 100% fail despite JA's inflated FFD guaranteed profit and overly compliant work group fueled ego). Other than that, I see zero real danger in anything DCI related for DL.
Worst case, and I mean nuclear apocalypse worst case, DL will have to give some mid contract money to some of the ASA's or possibly throw some mid contract raises at PCL, etc. While I don't see that happening to any significant extent, if it comes down to either that or being the only airline without outsourced lift overnight, they will obviously be more than capabile of weighing the costs of that and adjusting accordingly.
Not to mention there are still way too many RJ's flying around trying to hub raid one another. The 3 legacies could easily lose many hundreds of additional airframes in their combined regional system because all they do is raid eachother's markets 50 or 70 seats at a time, which is as stupid now as it was 10 or 15 years ago.
Well, I think the flying will go back to mainline as DCI implodes. The problem is the way that flying comes back. As I see it, there are two ways it comes back. Either they operate them at the mainline at mainline rates, or they come on board at our C scale type wages. The difference between the two is that they have to throw a ton of money at guys like Tsquare to get the C scale; He's licking his chops at that.