Didn't mean to stir up a hornet's nest, just trying to give a little perspective from someone who has seen the highs and seen the lows.

To answer a few questions, I am not a disgruntled SWA reject. When I was hired at Delta, I didn't even consider Southwest. It just wasn't competitive at the time. See, times change.

If Delta had won the bidding for Frontier, they would have been integrated in a status and category approach like every other integration at Delta. There probably would have been some adjustment because they didn't bring in wide body flying. There would not have been a staple.

A good example is the Delta/Pan Am integration. The Pan Am pilots came to Delta with NO PROTECTION at all. Completely naked, just like TWA was with AMR. ALPA had no fragmentation policy at that time and the Pan Am contract did not cover this transaction. In fact, the Pan Am pilots had to interview individually with Delta and get accepted to be hired. Delta could have easily tried to make the phony case that the Pan Am pilots were lucky to come with Delta (at that time we had the highest compensation) with a staple job. (any of this sound familiar). Instead we integrated them in from the top to the bottom of the list.

Finally, if you look at system CASM, it does not give the whole story. For instance Delta operates into Lagos, Nigeria with all of the security costs associated with that unstable country. That adds to our total CASM. However, we also charge $15,000 for a round trip business class ticket, the high costs are justified.

What you need to look at is the incremental net revenue that each carrier can generate, per seat mile, on identical routes (opportunity revenue - opportunity costs). For instance if SWA wanted to fly from ATL to SAV, how much net revenue would a Delta MD-88 make in relation to a Southwest 737. Today, Delta is quite competitive with Southwest. The days of Southwest just waltzing into a market and shoving everyone out are gone. They are going to have to compete tooth and nail for each market. (See Denver, CO if you need an example)

I will say it again, Southwest is a well run company and they are not "in trouble". Yet. They are going to have to adapt and the days of them ruling the roost are over. SWAPA's offer of a staple job is a joke (just like the FAPA offer of relative seniority) and the Southwest pilots better start adjusting their sights on a different target. Just because you did it to Morris and then body slammed ATA, doesn't mean you can expect that in the future. I think it telling that SWAPA was quite concerned about binding arbitration because they had to have known that they would never get a staple from a decent arbitrator.

I think that SWA and SWAPA missed a big opportunity to help themselves in this deal. Part (and I emphasize part) of the problem was SWAPA's unrealistic expectations in the seniority integration. They would probably do themselves a big favor if they took a reality check and got their sights aimed at something more reasonable in the future.