You can't call anything about the RJ plague except a failure by management... and us, for allowing it to exist. Billions and billions of dollars flushed (along with our jobs) down the toilet in an experiment to see if the basic premises of econmics and the laws of physics could be tampered with.

And of course, the theory is that we paid (dearly) for Comair because we couldn't control it well enough. And maybe all we gain was the right to kill it.

At the same time, I don't really see what the intrinsic value is. Since all regional carriers hide under our brand, they don't bring a brand. They don't bring anything, from management's standpoint, that another DCI carrier doesn't. Any assets they have that we want to keep, we don't have to sell. So I don't see any unique value that it brings. So when people say it's an asset, I'm not sure what they mean. It's an asset that would require a huge investment going forward, and an "asset" that offer an undifferentiated product at a greater cost. Why would a CEO get sentimental about it? They probably look at it in terms of an experiment in outsourcing, and since it wasn't particularly successful, they probably will shut it down at the lowest cost. No second-thought given, smoke-a-cigar-drink-a-cognac-and-go-to-bed-and-sleep-like-a-baby-like.

What's a little ominous in all of this, of course, is that you could fast-forward ten years, and substitute the words "Skyteam" for "Delta", and "Delta" for "DCI" or "Comair".

Which is precisely why we should have a NSL that allows us not to be whipsawed against our own, and VERY effective language in any JV agreements so that we can't be whipsawed from aborad either.