I am all for recapturing the 76 seat RJ flying into the DAL since my future depends on it but from a purely business standpoint, it seems to me the DAL management would look at the potential cost aspect of stapling all of Compass pilots into the DAL list versus the merging of Compass with Comair and spin it off to a third party. I know some senior NWA CAs have told me that they tried to staple Mesaba pilots and Compass pilots to the NWA list back in 2007 but this was rejected by both the majority of NWA pilots and the management for whatever reason.

If the economy looks like it would get worse during the summer of 2009 and DAL looks like it would be losing money, wouldn't it make more sense to spin off Compass and raise quick cash to fatten the asset side of the balance sheet and straight out furlough existing DAL list from the bottom? Seems to me that would wind up costing DAL less. I ran this idea to a gal friend of mine who is in aviation law and she seems to agree with me here. Not saying she is the guru of anything.