You mean like when we signed the joint venture and relinquished all JFK-CDG flights to AF? Or pulled one ATL-CDG in the summer so that AF could do it?
Or any other number of fights affected in both directions by the JV?

Let us not forget that if JAL does in fact hand over some of their trans-pacific flying into North America it will probably not be without us handing over some of the fNWA routes to them as well. Granted, the ones we stand to gain are much higher yield routes.

Also, let's not forget that there is a world outside of north america that does actually travel to Japan...Like all of Europe. JAL jumping on with AF and SkyTeam is a great thing for them. The only language I heard spoken in Japan, in the three years I lived there, with the same frequency as English was French. The Japanese love France almost as much as they used to love the US. And yes, there is a deep irony in that fact that isn't lost on me.

Solid European feed and rev sharing would be a boon for JAL.

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On a separate note, do not forget that M&A requires a certain mindset and corporate structure in order to execute them properly.

M&A can also be helped by momentum. Clearly we have that at Delta at the moment. Buying AS and a JAL JV would shore up our network holes as they currently stand. If I were mgmt, I would see no reason to capture the elements required to execute a grand strategy now. The price of these carriers/aircraft on the market are not going to go down from here.

Lufthansa is a good recent example of an airline that started buying other airlines and has just kept going. They are profitable to a sickening degree at the moment.

Clearly the market now believes that our corporate structure is well equipped for M&A activity, with SoC behind us it appears that this management team has pulled off the least bloody merger in modern aviation history.

We'll see if they can screw the next few moves up or not.