I’m not nearly as worried about oil prices this time around. The U.S. is probably going to become the biggest producer and exporter of crude this year according to forecasts, and there are a ton of fracking wells and operations that were bought up by investors when the price dropped, just waiting for the time to be right to start pumping again. OPEC screwed themselves by keeping the price so high for so long, and now we have the excess capacity in reserve. The biggest issue is going to be the labor shortage of pilots. (#WKTWH Mr. Glass, and told you as much in bankruptcy.) The zero to hero program started by AAG is an indicator that they are finally admitting the size of the problem. It takes several years to train someone and get them their hours now. Although they will try to hold on to the cheaper labor regional model for as long as possible, sooner or later either they will be forced to place a large group one order at mainline (or transfer 175’s to mainline), or they will need to make the WO regionals the ONLY way to get to AA if they want their regional feed staffed. Merging in the WO’ed airlines to AA would only be their final, last option if everything else they tried had failed. They simply don’t want to give up the pay differences among all the work groups, and lose their whipsawing ability.