Excellent point. In the legal world there is a concept known as piercing the corporate veil. The court tries to clear up the coporate veil or fog if you will that disguises the true identity of the corporation and its myriad of subsidiaries. Delta owns Mesaba and hence legally and techincally, Mesaba is a part of Delta. To argue that Mesaba is not a part of Delta is like trying to argue your own right arm is not part of your body. Someone said we are slaves to mother Delta. Well that applies to mainline DAL pilots as well. They are all just numbers to DAL. They are deluding themselves if they don't beileve that.

As for getting rid of WO regionals, you are right. DAL would have sold off or dismantle Mesaba if that made sense any business sense. But they have not, obviously because it would not make any sense to do it in light of their stated plan to bring in most of the DCI flying to WO.

I do believe the number of regionals flying for DAL will be reduced as stated by DAL CEO but the probability of Mesaba being one of the survivor is better than some non-WO whose contracts are coming up for renewal.

Mesaba is losing roughly 46 Saabs in total. That translates into approx 460 pilots. XJ has already furloughed 150 pilots. That means another 360 will be furloughed but part of that is offset by 45 flowthru in 2010 and 108 in 2011 if DAL hires. Unless Mesaba gets more airplanes in return, Mesaba will be a 60 airplane airline with roughly 650 pilots on the roster. Early 2007 newhires will be near the bottom of the seniority list.