We absolutely do own and control the code by contract. All of it. We then allow exceptions (sometimes too many of course). It has nothing to do with honor or pride or ego; if anyone is getting emo about it its you but I digress.

Once we allow exceptions, it becomes difficult to reign it in, but we've done a fairly good job of reversing the damages. We recently had an opportunity to pull 49 50 seaters worth of lift (almost 2500 seats) out of DCI permanently, but we elected to go another route because we didn't feel that pulling down 125 50 seaters was worth allowing 50 much more viable and effective 76 seaters.

We also made improvements internationally (in exchange for a few areas of small compromise) and any additional JV's (and there will be several) will, by contract, have to abide by our PWA as well. Many things the company would like to do with those will require additional consent from us.

So yes, we do very much own and control the code. And by "normal change" yes I mean withering. Pay is skyrocketing in the once cut throat bottom feeder regionals faster there than anyone thought was even survivable just a few short years ago, and the sector is shrinking and will likely continue to shrink as the RFP model fades away and numerous market forces push more flying to mainline above and beyond even the contracts that own and control the legacy airline codes.