Jeez 88:

Lets see. DAL needs billions of new jets. There will be some financing for that. They want a good risk after the CH11 era. They can exert pressure by tinkering with DAL's debt rating if their costs go way above the margins that they feel are safe.

You tout being a business man, you know that unless you are able to buy everything in cash you have to listen to the banks to get those loans. It is called a good credit rating. Lose that, and it gets very expensive to compete. We should see that after the last ten years. It is not rocket science.

It just means that for every action (restoration, raises et al way above industry norms) will cause and equal and opposite reaction to reign in costs. If AMR and CALALPA do not get this level, then we would be way above them wrt to costs, and as we saw with LUV killing markets in the last decade that is a dangerous place to me. I prefer to write history not repeat it.