I'll give you some bullet points, and you can draw your own conclusion. Pilots got 37% of the entire profit sharing pool, which (the entire pool) amounted to $1 billion or 25% of the entire profit the company made in 2014. THe shareholders, and institutional managers, who like it or not, OWN Delta Air Lines, probably do not like this. Management is in a corner. They need to reduce that number. Barring that, they need to placate those shareholders somehow, thus a share buyback and return of capital to those shareholders.

You can disagree with it if you want, and I really don't care, but it is probably a lot closer to reality than most anything I hear on here. If those shareholders don't feel some sort of satisfaction going forward, and that satisfaction must come in the form of profit for themselves, the will put their money elsewhere. The result of that will be lower CAPEX. You want that? It's not a threat, just business. Again, I don't care if you believe it or not, I am connecting obvious dots. No threats or capitulation or no expectation management. If you choose to make your stand because of their $5B payout, you are fighting a losing cause. It's just business.

Again, I'll wait and see what's in the TA before I get all gangsta. YMMV.