Exactly. So many people in both labor and management seem to think that we operate in a vacuum and that OUR pilot costs are not going to also soon be our competitors pilot costs. In my opinion at the end of the day we are negotiating with our customers indirectly - management is just an intermediary.

I think the senior execs likely do understand this principle but like anyone else they go for the low hanging fruit first. It's a lot easier for them to cut labor costs (i.e. let 600 people go just before the holiday season when you're making how many billions per year?!) than it is to pass increased costs on to your customer.

In Delta's case however, they wouldn't even have to pass the costs on to the customers and we would still have operating margins greater than those of our biggest competitors.

IF the company was investing it's profits in GROWTH instead of "returning value" to shareholders then I think a case could be made for keeping labor costs at a bankruptcy % of revenue level on the premise that the laborers would eventually benefit from the increased size of the future company.