This is all so dejavu. Part of Kirby's message included building up,LA.

I can recall pulling into LAX, with a CAL planes parked at every gate in terminal 6 half of them DC-10' or 747's. Slowly I watched us draw down and against the advice of every front line employee we gave up slots and gates to Delta and Alaska. Mgt said "we just can't make money there."

Sounded like Eastern Airlines in ATL in the 70's. Before that time Eastern owned Atlanta! Delta was a distant second.

The brain trust in New York said "those dumb hicks in the south don't know how to run an airline". They would cancel service from ATL into places like CLT (one 727) daily, due to "no growth" on the route. Same with other cities like STL. The local employees would say no, give us more lift and we will give you growth, these are popular routes.

The reason there was no growth was because they were running near %100 load factors!.

For every flight Eastern pulled out, Delta would add two. Pretty soon the railroad had to add a spur into Hartsfield just to haul the cash away, and Eastern was a memory.

Yeah , what did those dumb southern hicks on the front line know about running an airline?