Check;

I truly don't want to say this, but if this doesn't end up like you are saying/recommending, I am probably going to renew my card. There have been just too many instances where I have to ask myself "why do we even have a union?"

If scope is just simply negotiable, I am not interested in playing. As a relatively middle of the roader, I think I'm not alone. All of the arguments to the contrary are pointless.

Anything less would be... quite literally... a sell out.

Newk, nice Bears...

Might as well put the stamp on the envelope now. You're going to need it.

You're asking for exactly, and I couldn't tell you exactly.

I did fly a NRT station manager up from Manila recently. I was told that the NRT operation produces 11% of Delta's operating profit. And of the flights that have the top ten highest yields, 8 of them transit NRT.

By the tone of your post, I take it you think NRT is a money loser for Delta?

Carl

I am sure if NRT wasn't a former NWA hub, Tsquare & ALFA's slant on things would be completely different.

Since I have seen the real hub profitability numbers I won't talk specifics. If NRT is such a money machine, then why is it shrinking? Go look at any news story about the future of the Asian economy and tell me how much they talk about Japan and how much they talk about China. As Haneda opens up, our premium traffic will go there and all that is left for NRT is the economy traffic. This industry changes and NRT will change, no matter how long we hold our breath.

This is not some North/South fight, which you always make it out to be. CVG was less profitable than DTW so which hub shrank and which grew? This is economics pure and simple.

Holding on to the past is the best way to get run over by the future. I don't know what is in this TA, but I do know that the company can easily shrink NRT with very little penalty to them. If we can obtain any new protections in this deal, then we will be stupid to bypass them. NRT will shrink, it will decrease in importance to our network, that is just economics. It is not dead and it won't go away any time soon, but it will shrink.

Over flight is the name of the game and that is where our attentions should stay focused. NRT had its day and now that time has past.

so you are in the know, but not really, but kinda?

I don't have any numbers about NRT, but airline economics textbooks say that the profitability of a hub is closely connected to the business economy of city the hub is in. The O/D traffic out of the hub (and the resulting high prices we can charge [aka, look at CVG complaining about our high prices]) go a long way to the profitability of the hub.

For example, Kansas City would make a good connecting hub - lots of empty space for runways, halfway across the country, no ATC issues, medium sized city for employees to be sourced from, etc, but without a business enviroment in KC that travels, many airlines have tried and tried to make it a hub, and couldn't (Braniff, Eastern, US Air, TWA, Midwest Express, Frontier and Vanguard).

I think general malasie of the Japanese economy, the Fukushima disaster are all dragging on traffic out of NRT, causing yields to do poorly lately.

Now I don't agree we should just give into the company and say, "sure, you want to change scope again? Why not?" Scope is to protect us - the NRT slots were written into the contract to protect us. Why does it look like we are going to agree to give those protections up? To fly some planes the company was probably going to get anyway?

So are EASK's supposed to be these kind of Kilo's?

Wonder what would happen if we carried, gulp, nearly 3,000 pounds of uncut Cocaine in from Columbia? Makes the 40 pounds we found on an L1011 that came from Eastern look like nothing.

Police Seize 1.3 Tons Cocaine From Air France Jet, Dimanche Says - Bloomberg