Dude - I wouldn't exactly go to that extreme. Mesaba has always been one of the better regionals to work at. Granted, our company is not the same company of the 90s and before 9/11. Since then our mgmt has jumped on that same bandwagon most other airlines are all on... cut cut cut and let the employees shoulder them burden with little or no thanks for our work.

I still think we ought to be thankful at XJ... it could be much worse. To all our new guys (everyone hired since Ch11 emergence)... hang in there as said. Growth is coming to a close, but who knows what the merger has in store for us. You could be at worse places to ride out the storm. Everyone who wanted out who had the qualifications to leave could have done so since Ch11. The ones that truly were sick of it are gone... the ones that stayed must not think XJ is so bad. Think about that.

Oh... and by the way - NWA is not parking all their DC9s. They've actually slowly been parking them for awhile now, but are really accelerating the parking of the -30s this fall. Going into the merger there will be a sizeable fleet still flying around, namely the -40s, -50s and a some -30s.