Originally Posted by jayray

Doesn't American essentially own Eagle? How about Horizon and Alaska?

I have a hard time believing that the extra costs involved in being able to whipsaw labor outweighs the savings of combining 9 companies into one. Delta is an airline, they are in the business of flying airplanes. At what point does Delta just become a shell of a company with no real employees? Although the contract carriers overhead costs are not directly paid by Delta, the money still needs to come from somewhere to pay for the management team, the buldings, the HR people and all other costs. You don't think it would be cheaper to have one management team and one building to pay rent on verses 9? Delta doesn't want to keep the profits from their own flying? I'm sure it is already a nightmare managing all these airlines that they don't own and trying to bring one level of service. Think of the resources Delta needs now to manage all these regional operations that they don't own and collect no profit from and have no flexibility. If airlines are all about cost cutting there has to be some huge costs to cut here. One wholly owned and one contract, that is all it takes to keep labor in line.