ACL You know I don't buy that market share dilution argument.
They keep saying that but is a bunch of BS and as pilots we shouldn't buy into this and approve JVs that eliminate pilot jobs at Delta.

Let me be more direct:
For me this is personal because the seat and flying I was hired into at Delta LAX73N/B was permitted to be outsourced to Alaska Air by our union.

Cheers
George

LAX (2nd largest city in the US)
SAN (8th largest city in the US)
SFO (12th largest city in the US)
PDX (30th largest city in the US)
SEA (23 largest city in the US)

Delta flies one daily trip on mainline between all of these cities ONE!

Let's look at LAX SEA
The competition? Alaska, United and VA on some routes.
3 players: Alaska, UAL and VA

Currently Alaska is making a killing and its because AA and DL subsidize their flying. Look up LAX SEA for example on Kayak, youll see thge same flight operated by AK sold as a DL and AA flight.

We don't do anything like this on the East Coast and somehow are able to remain competitive

NYC (largest city in the US)
MCO (80th largest city in the US)
JFK MCO competing with Jetblue and American
LGA MCO competing with Jetblue

BOS (20th largest city in the US)
BOS MCO we have no trouble competing with JetBlue and Airtran

BDL (199th largest city in the US)
BDL MCO and compete with Southwest

And before you mention the mouse in MCO, the same mouse is in LA.

Our MEC in ATL lives in a bubble and bought into these arguments about RASM and JV and sold out the LAX based pilots plain and simple and recently one upped it to expand the Alaska codeshare to include international flying South of the border that used to be done by LAX 73N...

Cheers
George

We need to fly our own planes.

Cheers
George

George,
We fly 767,757, etc up and down the Eastern Seaboard all day. Why? It supports that level of traffic. Try that on the West Coast. Why do we not do that? There is not a ton of North-South traffic. From a company and a non-pilot perspective why would we enter a market that cannot support the added seats?

We could add some, but not to a lot. Why? See above. It does not matter if the cities are large or not, it matters about O and D traffic from give city pairs. Look at VA. They are not doing that well on N-S routes. Why? Same as above.

From a pilot perspective it stinks, we want to fly it, from a corporate perspective, we could fly it, but one for a few months before the losses started to effect other areas of the route structure. (We would be doing what AMR is doing and cutting some routes that make marginal money or lose less because they opt to maintain "market share" when they shouldn't)

We can either buy AS and deal with the blow back from AMR, or AMR can buy them and deal with the blow back from us. In the end the RASM goes in the toilet for all parties. Once the markets start to support something close to the lift that the Eastern routes do, rest assured all airlines will jump in.

We could also look at cities like MIA or MCO. Not too big on the O and D. How about

To get the true picture we need to look at demand between city pairs. As it was explained to me, it makes more sense for the company to continue the code share if possible than to end up buying AS and competing with AMR. As I said the RASM goes in the toilet.

I want us to fly those routes too. I just beleive that the reason that AS is doing it and not us is, we would force AMR to fight us for market share and we would get in to a capacity fight that no one wins. I many not like it, but looking at the O and D figures it makes sense.

The code share survived the merger. I know it is personal. I get that. I also do not like the fact that we have decided that our airline cannot support it, but that is their decision. We gave them the tools to do this long ago.

Going off what our options are now, there are two. Buy AS, or keep things status quo. We cannot just decide to dump seats in to routes that do not support them. You may think the data is BS, but not too many jets bigger than a 737 do West Coast N-S service.

Now if we are talking about us discontinuing service one day and AS starting the next, I agree, that is a bunch of crud. What that equates to is us opting to put jets elsewhere and not want to buy new ones. DAL ops to have AS do the service. I think we should take a stand on that too. I am discussing the other service, not the routes that they took over.

Ooooooh EPIC FAIL here bra.. MCO is the number one tourist destination in this or any other solar system. Ever heard of Mickey Mouse? A LOT of kids certainly have...

Exactly why 3 Virgin 744's and 2 BA 744's and/or 777's fly there non stop everyday.

We are talking about that. Go look at all the Hawaiian flying Alaska picked up from both pDAL and pNWA.

Decorum and prudence dictates a revision to that post about our Seattle operations.

I'd sure like to fly Mr. Anderson to Seattle and buy him a couple cups of coffee while he observed ... .

You forgot the third option. Go and lease and/or buy the E-190/195 or similiar 100 seat jet and fly it. They can get as many as they want and start flying them tomorrow with no scope problems......as long as Delta pilots are flying them.