Denny;
It is important to debate the points here and on other forums. Many of the "Silent Majority" read this stuff to form an opinion. Arguing both side of an issue is good for the gander.

Carl; We are on the same page more or less.

A few pages back I did the math for a SWA parity rate on our 737's versus their. It was a 23 percent raise off of this year. Though the math is not perfect each percent is about 18 million and goes up as you compound the raises on each other.
Ergo:
To reach parity we would need a 414 million dollar increase per year to our cost. ( Probably 500 million as we do the math for are larger jets)
That equates to about 1.5% of our revenue this year. Doable IMO.

I also would not be surprised to see us morph to a 40 billion dollar a year corp as the world economy turns.