(1) Beats the alternative
(2) Management would rather lock in low, at present profit levels than deal with ALPA at a more profitable level when higher pay is justified
(3) Management needs a known cost structure BEFORE making expansion plans to capture more revenue
(4) "Labor Problems" could dampen profits (and/or Wall Street expectations)

... and while the industry is cyclic, you and I have never seen this sort of capacity discipline and load factors in our lifetimes. Even now, growth plans are very restrained.

... and there remains some low hanging fruit. Management has done a good job optimizing revenue. Management has not done nearly as good a job on the cost side. The costs of outsourcing are better allocated, but still stand room for improvement. We are now 15 to 17 billion dollars or more into our outsourcing experiment with wholly owned carriers. Those costs are not transparently carried to our bottom line, partly because management has been none too keen to admit insourced, outsourcing, remains a failure of management planning and execution. A lot of those costs are "spread like peanut butter" to the mainline operation.

NWA style accounting controls and systems are improving management's visibility into the operation.

Further, any debt that costs more to carry than it's return on invested capital is a drag on profitability. We are doing well to get that debt off the books.

You are correct that macroeconomic factors could harm all US businesses, but I continue to be optimistic about Delta's performance amongst our peer group.

Just my opinion