Nope. They have nothing. Absolutely nothing. They have no planes, no routes, no gates, nothing of value to anyone other than their place as yet another low cost whipsaw provider/sharecropper that could be replaced very quickly and no one would notice.

This wasn't about our moral committment to our customers, this was about our financial committment to over paying and over ordering so many RJ's and setting up an epic fail system where we buy planes and gas and rent crews for 100% fake phony non existant airlines to fly for us and then being stuck holding the bag with no where to put them.

But Shirley if we get creative with our scope we can one day hire again. We're not really gutting scope see, we're just tinkering with the "production balances" and this is actually an improvement for you guys! Besides we have soooooo many 50 seaters and we really need your help getting out of them! Oh won't you help us in our hour of need dear pilot group and sign off on more DC-9-10 replacement jets to be flown at more fake airlines?

 

Absolutely... Those IFEs could display a video poker screen as soon as the GPS shows 12 miles offshore, and let the suckers start playing... I'd be willing to bet (see what I did there?) that we could make enough profit to pay for most international flights..

The house ALWAYS wins.

 

Here we go again with the same old tired argument. If one was to average out the legacies pay over the last 25 years you would see that the "high" wage blip in the early 2000's only brings the average up a few percentage points. SWA pilot wages have been steady (the tortoise) and in an upward direction up until now. Legacy pay (the hare) has up and down movements that would make me reluctant to count on the high points being maintained. Call it the lottery if you wish but SWA management used a tool (cash) available to them and were successful overall. The idea that they would use it to take money off the table? Some proof of that being their intent would be nice. Just because other managements have played dirty pool doesn't mean all managements do.

Little 'ol SWA put everyone else into Chapter 11? Really? 9-11, poor management decisions, etc. just might have had something to do with it. Oh yes! Don't forget competition. When a competitor offers a similar product for less money the consumer just might try them. Even SWA is not immune to the competitor who comes into a market and offers their product for less. It is happening right now. How management reacts to that competition is the question. I would say that some managements have reacted poorly, if at all, to the threats.

The Oscar

 

BINGO!!

The idea of DAL owning a refinery has got all of the "experts" baffled. Fact is the transportation network is in place, and they can buy crude on the open market. DAL is the number one user of Jet A outside of the Air Force in the USA. Looking forward, there will eventually be growth and the need for a more stable cost plot wrt to our fuel bill. If DAL can make a penny profit on each gallon of jet A produced it will be a great investment.

Currently, the oil companies charge a constant 7% margin on their product. If DAL did this, and sold it on the open market, the whole hedging plan currently in place becomes less important. This is a capital intensive endeavor, but with it comes the ability to, in the mid and long term, free up a significant amount of capital to invest in other things like jets.

I like the idea, and is the out of the box type of thinking that we need to be at the top of the industry. It comes with risk, but anything worthwhile does.

*Of note:
We hired an oil industry expert a year and a half ago to do our hedging program. I doubt DAL would even be doing this if it was a fools errand.

We also hired Mr Chase most recently, who made a name for himself analyzing DAL. Gentleman like him do not come to DAL unless there is a very high probability of seeing a sigificiant return on the pay cut. He has access to the capital markets in NYC.

This investment, depending on how DAL structures it; within the airline, change the corporate structure where DAL holdings owns the refinery and then the airline, etc, will probably come close to adding a 50% revenue increase to our bottom line. Profits will be strong once it is on line, and as a result, DAL will be a strong, wildly profitable powerhouse.

 

. . . . . what Oscar said +5

So when are you legacy types going to stop bringing down the industry by working for substandard wages and benefits? I am getting sick and tired of having you ride our coat tails. We drag you along and you return no benefit to the industry.

Do these kinds of comments sound familiar to you legacy pilots? They should, it is all that most you could say about SWA for years and years and years. Karma sucks.

 

In case you haven't been paying attention son, the chain has stopped clinking beneath your particular car. Get ready for the negative Gs, and see if you can remain inside with your hands waving in the air.

Yup... Karma sucks.

 

Apologies Sailing,

I reread your post, but can I still borrow a couple hundred?

 

On their last published yearly financial statement they report 1.4 billion in owned assets. They include property and maintenance facilities from Mesaba as well as over 60 owned aircraft including 38 Q400's and CRJ900 that are owned not leased.

 

... and yet no one on God's green Earth would lend them a nickel.

Reading through the bankruptcy filing makes one wonder who wrote it. Delta has as much or more operational control over Pinnacle as it does Delta. Bet our Flight Ops does not report a weekly budget.

Kinda funny ... an off the books subsidiary, that isn't.

At least the CRJ900's give Delta management something to swap with Skywest to park some of the early model 50 seaters. Management probably got that flexibility more cheaply from the Pinnacle implosion than what they would have had to pay ALPA to get it out of Section 1B40.

 

Little old SW was the largest domestic airline at the time. You can call that little but most would not. We sell a commodity. If you control 20 percent of a commodity you can set pricing. Why do you think that just as bad a economic set of conditions now has such a different outcome on the industry. SW was no longer hedged. They had to allow price increases or they would have lost huge sums of money. Everyone else could also increase revenue. If tomorrow UAL decided to drop all domestic pricing 20 percent the entire industry including Delta and Southwest would lose vast sums of money and be back in Chapter 11 soon. That is what Southwest was able to due with their fuel hedge advantage. Their CEO even stated they were going to use their fuel hedges to drive 1 or 2 legacy airlines out of business. Only the overnight drop in fuel in 05 from 140 a barrel to 40 a barrel prevented them from succeeding.