There's alot of noise on Flightinfo about Mesaba being the centerpiece after the merger...below is excerpt from an analyst conference call with Delta, any comments?
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Raymond Neidl - Calyon Securities


Switching to the smaller aircraft, you are going to have partnerships with almost every regional airline out there, plus you’re going to own a number of regional airlines. Is there any thought to maybe consolidating that and making that a little bit more streamlined.

Douglas M. Steenland


I think the ratio, the consolidation with our regional jet both carefully owned carriers as well as our contracts is a big opportunity for the combined airline. And yes, we expect there to be of significant shuffling of the deck, as well as some cost value out of realigning our portfolio.

Richard Anderson


The great piece here is between Compass and Mesaba you have the very best operators in cost structure. So, our goal with our contract carriers is to bring their margins down over time to more accurately reflect the overall margins in the industry. And Compass and Mesaba will give us that ability to shift flying from contract carriers to owned carriers at much better CASM.
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