No rumors until after that merger has been announced.

Ok, but can you tell me if we will transition to their LGBP system? ;):D

If we were smart we would. That way we could go DOH because airplane type/size/speed wouldn't matter...

And will they come to DALPA wanting an LOA for increased flex time and perhaps vacation cancellation because they just can't keep the hiring pipeline going with the additional training requirements (ala NWA)?

OK - Mainline block hours have been cut but what about the total passenger count for the DAL system?

I assume that DCI passenger counts have or will start to decrease but what does the picture look like if you throw in all of our codeshares/JV's/Alaska etc?

Basically - Is DAL selling less tickets as capacity has decreased over the last few years or are we simply outsourcing more passengers?

I don't know what the answer to that question is, but I am cautiously optimistic that either way the trend will start to turn positive soon.

Scoop

Yes they won the contract to do that for UPS.

Pilots need to work more. Pilots work more. Pilots touch controls touched by 8-20 people in the last 24 hours. Pilots walk around airports packed with thousands of people. Pilots exposed to more so they get sick more. Pilot come to work sick. Pilot goes home sick. So now does the other pilot.

More work -> more sick -> more sick calls.

I guess the goal is a profit in 2013 and/or 2014. If the goal was long term financial health then get winglets. But if all that matters is showing a profit in 2013, and maybe even 2014, then absolutely cancel the winglets because we'd never break-even.

the life of a delta pilot from late 2008 to now.

But don't worry, next year...

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...CzvpiKI27goW1O

[editors note: I'm not that pessimistic but I've also given up hope which makes one optimistic for even a slight improvement. Yes, my expectations have been effectively managed.]

I think the decision to potentially run extremely thin staffed, well beyond just green slip cost matrix thin staffed but potential flight cancellation thin staffed, just to push off the very very very minor expense of padding the pilot ranks with 100 or 200 pilots will come back to haunt us.

Then there's the VAtl "partnership" which in all fairness could go either way but I'm very skeptical about it. Not to mention the insane AS code share welfare agreement that dumps 2X the pax onto them that they put onto us. On one hand we're told its only 9 pax per flight, but yet some flights need to be 50%. At least we've taken the first step and admitted there's a problem. We're also funneling many hundreds of millions of dollars into the war chests of future IndyAir wanna bes. Most, likely all, will collapse and go away forever, but we will have to bleed more than they do while it happens. Many have pointed out we're getting into a very tight spot with future aircraft slots/delivery needs as well as our currently anemic widebody fleet. And we've just committed to blowing a Billion dollars by throwing it at investors hoping we will get more in return but all I can see from that is we might get a share price bump from it, but we're guaranteed to be down a billion dollars at the end of the day.

Going forward, how will DL handle the many, many hundreds of growth narrowbody planes the "LCC's" are planning on unleashing against domestic capacity, especially when the mandate so far has been "preserve yields at all costs"? Then there's the fantasy foreign airlines that leach off of two sided subsidies while celebrating their ability to age/weight/looks discriminate with more fantasy planes on order than molecules of hydrogen in the universe.

We're doing a lot right, and I've said as much many times. But some of what we're doing is very short sighted and unsustainable. There's talk of some of those trends changing, but so far that's all we've seen.

That too. You can rarely if ever fool the market long term with little tricks like this. There really needs to be a major investor paradigm shift that results from all of this, and I just don't see the upside from things like this having all that much potential, especially when they are guaranteed to cost us more than they save us (winglets, hiring, etc).