Agreed, but I agree with gettinbumped'd agreement....

As opposed to just playing the musical chair/UAX carrier shuffle game, they just.....need.....to....go....away....PERIOD.

"The 50 seaters dead!!!! The 50 seaters dad!!!!!"

Not soon enough.......

I often wonder how sUAL would have turned out if John Edwardson had gotten the job 17 years ago vs being pushed out the door.

They're not going anywhere they do serve a purpose, but we need to purge all the LCAL mgmt style thinking that put them all over the freaking place. Like not a single mainline flight to NWFL/gulf coast, -8's on hub to hub flights, RJs into places like ATL.

Simple rule, if DAL flies a mainline jet somewhere, no 50 seaters allowed.

Agreed, they're NOT going anywhere, and will always serve a purpose. But the amount in service can't go quick enough. Let them go to TYR, BPT, CLL, wherever. Besides, grandpa on the 73 couldnt hack a 4-5 leg day doing nothing but Texas 2 step/Texas triangle of death (BRO-HRL-CRP) all day. He'd be complaining "this crap is for the RJ kids!!!!" ;)

You'll always need it for certain markets. However, while everyone is hung up on the amount of 50 seaters, what's the bigger threat to the narrow body job? The crappy 50 seater of the dual class RJ? While people were so focused on L-CAL's 274 POS ERJ's, there should have been as much if not more to reign in the dual class 700/E-jets. Granted, the contract did a decent job tightening up that 274 as well as L-UAL's disgraceful 70 seat giveay, but still.....

Agree with that too. But that thinking is a little funny. As in "let's let DAL be the trend setters and show all the initiative. We're too slow and behind the times to innovate/advance".

I'm NOT saying YOU, but how UCH has handled this whole thing. Remember the press release with the 700's? "Something something customers don't want RJ's something something mainline product something something capacity".

It's like they they thought they we're some kind of genius for figuring it out when DAL had ALREADY figured it out.

Funny, for a very long time, American's marketing was to go where UAL just pulled out! They did very well doing that.

B6 did the same thing to AA. Look at the Caribbean.

Irony of mgt. cycles
 

This is all so dejavu. Part of Kirby's message included building up,LA.

I can recall pulling into LAX, with a CAL planes parked at every gate in terminal 6 half of them DC-10' or 747's. Slowly I watched us draw down and against the advice of every front line employee we gave up slots and gates to Delta and Alaska. Mgt said "we just can't make money there."

Sounded like Eastern Airlines in ATL in the 70's. Before that time Eastern owned Atlanta! Delta was a distant second.

The brain trust in New York said "those dumb hicks in the south don't know how to run an airline". They would cancel service from ATL into places like CLT (one 727) daily, due to "no growth" on the route. Same with other cities like STL. The local employees would say no, give us more lift and we will give you growth, these are popular routes.

The reason there was no growth was because they were running near %100 load factors!.

For every flight Eastern pulled out, Delta would add two. Pretty soon the railroad had to add a spur into Hartsfield just to haul the cash away, and Eastern was a memory.

Yeah , what did those dumb southern hicks on the front line know about running an airline?

That LCAL mindset you speak of produced the best scope language in the industry. No 50+ seat jets ever. Wonder why we collectively dropped that ball together?

But thank god the 70 seat turbo prop was never really feasible from an operational/reliability standpoint.

You're kidding us right? Its only because management didn't need them that badly. If they did want RJs bigger than 50 seats we've have sold out for a couple bucks and still had zero work rules. I'll take what I have now contractually vs what CAL ever gave us.