James Pilcher – The Cincinnati Inquirer
Can you give me any specifics on how the new fare system is operating here.
And as a follow-up, can you also talk about how the process is going with the new regional handling subsidiary between Comair and Mesaba and how that whole transition is going? With the announcement today that you’re going to cut 30 RJs, how does that impact the local CVG hub?
Richard H. Anderson
I can address the issue on the ground-handling subsidiary. You know, the purpose behind pulling our ground-handling subsidiary was to continue to maintain separate operations at each carrier, that to have consistency in our customer experience across all of the Delta Connection carriers. And that work is well under way and it’s going well.
As we look out at the regional carrier reductions, those reductions, given the size of the fleet, will probably have minimal impact on staffing across the airports in the regional carrier network. Because we operate a fairly large fleet, it will have a minimal impact in terms of staffing and the extent to which it does have any impact will once again work to mitigate that as best we can with our regional carrier partners.
Glen W. Hauenstein
We have been very, very pleased with the response from the people in Cincinnati and northern Kentucky to the lower fare structures that we put in place there a little over a month ago now. And so we are continuing to hope that people continue to use that service and we are able to keep those similar structures in place.
Of course, fares change so they will migrate up and down, depending on the demand in the market, but in general we’re very, very happy with the response that we’ve gotten to the lower fare structures in Cincinatti.
Did they dodge the whole future of Mesaba and Comair question?
