shack! Every time we have had massive hiring it has been due to understaffing and massive greenslips. Pilots are their own worst enemies. How many are flying ALV +15.

Investor call notes:

Hedged against the yen sell off in 2013- first year that the majority of our Asia capacity is outside of Japan, where market is stronger. 23 MD 80s for spare parts. 1B profit initiatives by end of 2013. New terminal at JFK will fix our revenue weakness at JFK.

10 billion debt goal will allow new capital distribution plan, which will be detailed soon. Plan is basically to reshuffle Capex, debt reduction, investor (dividends?)

Upguaging domestic network will improve our margins. Domestic performance strong on corp. sales. Mex. and Cent. AM. strong, S.A. flat, Europe doing well on reductions, Japan weakening, Asia strong.

VA Codeshare/JV/ATI: File by end of month for ATI. Hoping for approval in 6 months. Codeshare fully up and running by next winter.

Pension unfunded liability will increase year end by 2 Billion. No change in funding or expenses.

New skymiles program will favor high yield customers vs. low yield customers.

Q? Is DL under investing on fleet? Living on borrowed time and facing a huge bill for new airplanes?

RA says at DL we use our shareholders money to get returns from day 1 on fleet investment. Avg. age of widebody fleet 13.5 years right now. Glut of narrowbodies on market right now so it's a good time to refleet the narrowbodies. Goal is 10-12 percent return on invested value. In order to hit those returns, must have asset over a long time to depreciate and recapture investment. (Sounds like any widebody re fleeting would be incremental, market based, opportunistic).

Pinnacle question: Why are we moving towards in-house regional again? Most other airlines abandoned long ago...

RA: Pinnacle deal is "pretty revolutionary step" due to cost structure (pilot agreement) and fleet. No seniority issues as we've had in past in regional industry. (interesting comment, not sure what that means exactly, perhaps that they expect turnover to keep pilot costs very low?)

50 seat retirements: 100-125 remaining within the next 18-24 months.

Capacity going forward? ED B. "Flat"

RA: Capital markets and cost of fuel will prevent airlines like Skybus from popping up and hurting our revenue in future years.

Recently signed one of the largest banks in the world based in NY as corp. customer. Our global network and Virgin JV big part of that due to access to London. Financial services are very big part of our HVC base, so London/NY is key.

ATL competitive changes: Airtran SW down to 170 departures per day from peak of 300 a few years ago.


RA: 2014 looking like a very strong year for DL- 3 year outlook strong.

Even more certain today that Trainer refinery was a good decision for our company.

My take:
Someone said that Margins are our most important measure. Even more so than CASM. So with regards to the future growth prospects at DL, I'd keep that in mind. It doesn't sound like there will be any expansion unless it will keep margins neutral to positive. I am left with the impression that the number one goal of DL management is to make DL stock an attractive investment. They will do so by building a good brand and keeping employee relations good, and by making prudent capital investments and making sound marketing decisions. Not very sexy, but there it is.

Well, I guess it's time to recycle Johnso's login, now that he's been uncovered. And the moustache was too obvious anyway: he'll need to be shorn.

That hasn't stopped us in the past. Although the real deal is the kingfisher jets and HI. Remember, consolidation isn't over. The pieces have to fall into place in just the right order though.

RATS!!! I've been discovered!!!! :D

We must have been listening to the same call! Except for this: I'm not being sarcastic when I say this, but I think you can't get to a margin without CASM and RASM being part of the equation. More specifically, you need to look at overall cost, and revenue, right? Looks like upgauging keeps the CASM manageable, and keeping capacity under control keeps the RASM high enough. But at some point, cutting capacity doesn't increase RASM any more.

Thing is, this is all well and good if the competition is happy to play along.

What if they don't?

I'm looking through the list of ALPA-approved logins, and I found this one: "Lumberg". Has it been used before?

Oh, crap! I just outed myself too.

I think that can has been kicked 2-3 years down the road BY the competition. Trainer, if it's everything I hope, may just make us uncatchable.

+717

Basically right...their flow provisions will severely cut down on the number of "lifers" at the higher end of their longevity scales. As Bar often says, flow agreements reset longevity (or something like that). So as we start hiring, we'll take their guys at a pretty high rate before they get to the higher paid years...and of course their longevity doesn't transfer.

It's a crappy deal for the Pinnacle guys, but hopefully we will take their guys pretty quickly so that job becomes a truly temporary gig like it should be.