Originally Posted by acl65pilot

Yes, Johnson it will. MSP and not ATL!
That is great, that way we have room for another 777 sim!

Originally Posted by acl65pilot

Yeah, that or a "100 seat" sim.....

Originally Posted by bigdaddie

Let me start this post by stating to Slow that this is my opinion only. In my In-Command class (Feb 09, I think) Steve Gorman stated that the company was in no way interested in AS because we get all the benefit of the feed with zero capital investment. Besides SEA, what exactly is AS feeding, LAX? I don't think so because we don't go anywhere from LAX other than the few cities that NW brought to the alter. The capital investment to feed the West ourselves would be minimal at worst. Here's the shocker for all you newbies: Delta isn't interested in the west coast.

West coast flying has low yields and the hubs that provide service anywhere are a long ways away (DTW, MSP, ATL, SLC - so-so). If Delta gets say a 2% ROI from the west but 4%+ from cities east of the Mississippi, then guess where the investment goes? It is only when the revenue from these other cities are affected enough from our pathetic west coast presence that the west will grow. The time may be coming but I don't think we are there yet. If JAL falls through and AA gets AS, I think DALs reaction will be to bump up service E-W and not west N-S. A short term fix for a long term problem.

Folks, I more than anyone would love to see the west grow by any mechanism, internal growth or merger, but I don't see it happening until we are done conquering the world OR a major west coast carrier fails. I don't see the latter happening any time soon, as well as there are many start-ups and/or regionals that would jump in to pick up the traffic like Skywest and Allegiant. Until things change, Delta will continue to be the worlds largest SE regional airline.

Originally Posted by DAL4EVER

Essential,

While I agree we have a long way to go to recapturing our lost retirement and payscales we did improvements with the LOAs. We will be the highest paid of the legacies, we don't have guys on furlough and each year we are adding to our 401ks. It doesn't mean we should be satisfied but we have and are making improvements that will hopefully be used as a solid baseline to build off in 2012.

I would rather be negotiating from a position of strength (hopefully the economy has improved by then and our synergies have fully been realized) than go for broke and achieve nothing. Look at UAL, CAL and AMR for how well that has worked for them.

Originally Posted by acl65pilot

Yeah, that or a "100 seat" sim.....

Originally Posted by forgot to bid

Could we use our current fleet without buying a single new aircraft to increase flying up and down the west coast to the level sufficient enough to head off any AMR/Alaska merger? The 88 seems like it could fly up and down the coast just fine, Alaska did that for a long time. But we've got 320s, 737s M89s and CRJ900s that seem like they could do the job, couldn't they?

Originally Posted by RockyBoy

Why don't we spin off a discussion for football. Some of us could care less about football, especially college football.