I believe Mesa, in getting the injunction, provided evidence that a number of the cancellations were not Mesa-caused, but were rather cancellations requested by Delta...Delta then used these very same cancellations in their data to justify the cancellation of the Mesa contract.

Again, the burden of proof was on Mesa in order to be granted the injuction. If the judge felt that Delta was justified in cancelling the contract, the injunction would never have been issued. The judge would have believed that Mesa had a strong case in order to grant the injunction. This wasn't a pitty party.

Delta and Mesa are like a bad marriage. This process can be dragged on in the courts, but that takes up valuable time and costs quite a bit of money...neither of which many airlines have much of nowadays. Delta has made it clear, regardless of Mesa's perfomance, that there are irreconcileable differences here. The better option would be to reach some sort of mediated settlement, pay off Mesa, and be on their merry way. This would provide Mesa w/ some much needed cash and would allow Delta to continue its agenda of consolidating their regional feed and trimming perhaps some additional feed from other code-share partners.