It's official...this post is close to fizzling out.

If DL is going to cut close to 10% capacity, on average how many aircraft/crews would that equal? If you simply take 10% of the combined NW/DL fleet, I think you come up with around 650 pilots (assuming 10 pilots per jet average).

If that scenario were to play out, it is possible a furlough could be in the horizon. However, I understand early retirement requests are being denied at NW. Can anyone speak to this?

Quite frankly, it doesn't seem 650 pilots is enough to warrant a furlough considering:

1. guys want to retire.
2. oil is cheap offsetting a weak economy.
3. DL doesn't want to give up/open up their existing markets. It recent days, DL has announced new service in some markets. Also, Southwest is talking about going into new markets. I don't think DL/NW wants to scale back. Consider Southwest flying MSP-MDW. Certainly the worlds largest airline doesn't want to invite competition.

So, I'm an optimist...but I don't see a reason to be negative yet folks.