How Northwest took over Delta

[General Lee]

Pay Raise? If you are proud of that little thing Y'all call a pay raise, you should be embarrassed. Better bases? They all suck equally. Frozen Pension?, now let me talk real SSSLLLOOOWWWW so you get it, only about 20% of NWA will receive a frozen pension even worth mentioning.

I am at 13 years and will receive, sit down and get ready, a whopping 1785.00/month. Holy crap, Vegas here I come.

Don't be so frickin simple.

Come on now, you did get a pay raise, from the pittance you negotiated to allow those senior guys to keep their bigger frozen pensions. You did it to yourselves, and now you got a raise back to something better. As far as how much we all got---when you negotiate during $140 a barrel oil, it is called bad timing. IF you knew what was going to happen (over $100 less per barrel for gas and a depression looming) why didn't you tell everyone on CNBC? You are a genius DC9 Captain, so you know everything. And, your whopping $1700 something a month might be a lot better than the rest of us who left a lot of it in 401Ks. You might be a RICH DC9 Captain when you retire with an extra $1700 a month....


Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[maxblast72]

SWA is going to be here in two years no matter what happens with AAI.
Now that SWA does not have a supreme hedge position, the costs on like routes will be quite similar.

Now that SWA pays the same for Jet A as Airtran, Airtran actually has about a 10% total CASM advantage over SWA. I don't know why Delta would want to play games with Airtran again. We saw where that got them the first time. They are not going to out low-cost the lowest cost LCC.

Delta should focus on building the strongest international system in the world and building monopolies on some of those routes (like their new routes to Africa). That is where their strength is. Delta will have better luck putting United or USAirways out of business than Airtran. Like the article said, Delta should have put Airtran out of business in the late 1990's. It is a little too late and expensive now.

 

[General Lee]

Now that SWA pays the same for Jet A as Airtran, Airtran actually has about a 10% total CASM advantage over SWA. I don't know why Delta would want to play games with Airtran again. We saw where that got them the first time. They are not going to out low-cost the lowest cost LCC.

Delta should focus on building the strongest international system in the world and building monopolies on some of those routes (like their new routes to Africa). That is where their strength is. Delta will have better luck putting United or USAirways out of business than Airtran. Like the article said, Delta should have put Airtran out of business in the late 1990's. It is a little too late and expensive now.

Delta wants to run ATL at all costs, and will put DC9s on 717 routes instead of 50 seaters that always lose. Since the DC9s are owned outright, it should make it feasible. Sure, the 717s are nicer and have XM radio, but the DC9s have something that the 717s don't---a non-autothrottle out of sync sound for the engines that will lull everyone to sleep in woderful dreamland. And if NWAREDTAIL is flying it, you can guarantee that everyone will be lulled asleep, just like reading his posts here on FI.


Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[Griswold]

Pay Raise? If you are proud of that little thing Y'all call a pay raise, you should be embarrassed. Better bases? They all suck equally. Frozen Pension?, now let me talk real SSSLLLOOOWWWW so you get it, only about 20% of NWA will receive a frozen pension even worth mentioning.

I am at 13 years and will receive, sit down and get ready, a whopping 1785.00/month. Holy crap, Vegas here I come.

Don't be so frickin simple.

I'm not proud of the pay raise, but you guys got a big bump. Let me talk real slow for you, about 0 guys at DAL have what you are talking about (1785 a month).

A NWA 320CA now can be 7ER CA. At NWA that was all he could hold.

So if really think about it ya'll got more. So stop your bitching.

 

[Fly4hire]

And, we are going to try to smash Airtran, but not wipe it away. We know the stakes, and the ex NWA guys have done a better job keeping the LCCs at bay. They now pretty much run the boat here (even though a Delta exec now runs NWA until SOC). Regardless, I will still do my new favorite route (Forteleza and Recife, Brazil) and ENJOY it. Bye now.


Bye Bye--General Lee

Why not wipe it away? Don't knock a BHM layover until you try it.

 

[crj567]

Steenland? Huh? I think he is now on the board, not in management anymore. But, you KNEW that....your expertise is overwhelming... Talk about pompous---at least know what you are talking about.

And, we are going to try to smash Airtran, but not wipe it away. We know the stakes, and the ex NWA guys have done a better job keeping the LCCs at bay. They now pretty much run the boat here (even though a Delta exec now runs NWA until SOC). Regardless, I will still do my new favorite route (Forteleza and Recife, Brazil) and ENJOY it. Bye now.


Bye Bye--General Lee

General, are you truly boneheaded enough to believe that a board seat is less powerful than a management role-especially with Steenland effectively running the board? The board members freaking hire/fire the management "team." Steenland has 4 of his boys on the board (not to mention Anderson.) You really think you can out-run that idiot and his board?

-Damn, you really are not very bright, sir.

P.S.-The threat SWA poses to DAL is far greater than AirTran ever has posed. Once agin, for slow learners like Gen Lee: SWA has a much better scale than DAL. They are better-sized to be profitable while offering lower fares. Part of the reason is that they have no expensive international routes in their total cost structure (which are turning into money-losing black holes, PDQ.) (Are you starting to question DAL's logic of dumping 40% of their flying in the international basket now?) Still not smart enough to see this one coming?

ATL passengers will jump on a SWA plane in a N.Y. second and fly to pretty much anywhere and everywhere in the country they choose (SWA has a kick-ass route structure these days.) Everyone will jump at the chance to go and see Grandma on SWA for $58 each way and stick it to the big airline that has charged $780 for the same trip all these years. This will be the demise of your beloved airline Gen, you can count on it.

DAL should be shoring AirTran up any way they can think of.

-If you still doubt this logic, I suggest you pull up a profit/loss statement for both SWA and DAL over the past couple of decades and put your little ferrett brain to work trying to figure out which airline has made truckloads of money vs. which airline lost many, many times more money than it made over the same period and left their poor investors with useless T.P. for stock.

-Just get back to me on that one, pompus sub commander toolpenguin!

 

[clippyrip]

Easy Turbo.

 

[General Lee]

General, are you truly boneheaded enough to believe that a board seat is less powerful than a management role-especially with Steenland effectively running the board? The board members freaking hire/fire the management "team." Steenland has 4 of his boys on the board (not to mention Anderson.) You really think you can out-run that idiot and his board?

-Damn, you really are not very bright, sir.

P.S.-The threat SWA poses to DAL is far greater than AirTran ever has posed. Once agin, for slow learners like Gen Lee: SWA has a much better scale than DAL. They are better-sized to be profitable while offering lower fares. Part of the reason is that they have no expensive international routes in their total cost structure (which are turning into money-losing black holes, PDQ.) (Are you starting to question DAL's logic of dumping 40% of their flying in the international basket now?) Still not smart enough to see this one coming?

ATL passengers will jump on a SWA plane in a N.Y. second and fly to pretty much anywhere and everywhere in the country they choose (SWA has a kick-ass route structure these days.) Everyone will jump at the chance to go and see Grandma on SWA for $58 each way and stick it to the big airline that has charged $780 for the same trip all these years. This will be the demise of your beloved airline Gen, you can count on it.

DAL should be shoring AirTran up any way they can think of.

-If you still doubt this logic, I suggest you pull up a profit/loss statement for both SWA and DAL over the past couple of decades and put your little ferrett brain to work trying to figure out which airline has made truckloads of money vs. which airline lost many, many times more money than it made over the same period and left their poor investors with useless T.P. for stock.

-Just get back to me on that one, pompus sub commander toolpenguin!

Wow, you sure can talk the talk, even though you are as clueless as they come. You really should have let the Capt land at SAV the other day. Do you think Richard Anderson would have allowed Steenland to go to the Board if it gave him MORE power? Steenland wanted to stay in the gravy train management, and RA wouldn't allow it. He is marginalized on the board. He has a say, but it aint enough to change anything. He does NOT run the board either. Nope. WRONG. RA wanted him out of running anything, and he got his way. No merger would have resulted, and that infact stopped the first attempt. You really aint bright it seems.


Southwest is a known entity, and infact has lost a lot of power thanks to lower gas. They actually have the sameor higher costs as many out there now, which makes them LESS of a threat. They have to charge MORE now, thanks to having a level playing field. Point to point stuff they do fairly well, but they lack connections, and NEED a lot of gates to keep their plan working. Even Gary Kelly said no more expansion this year, and small point to point stuff will be met by vigorous competition from the incumbent. Their MSP to MDW flights will be bombarded by NWA when they start it. We'll see how that goes, but they are not as stong as they were with the hedge advantage, and their fixed costs are rising thanks to higher contracts with employees. Should be fun to watch.

Profit or loss statements from the past decade for both carriers don't mean much now. Look at current financials. Yes, DL will have another bad quarter in Q1, but things are scheduled to get better from actual synergies (read ground people and gates) showing results. Southwest NEVER had bad quarters, and look how they are doing now? Not good news from them either. Playing field is becoming equal---not good news for ANY LCC. So, jackhole---maybe you can wrap your brain around some of that and finally figure it out---Southwest's advantage is going away, and our's will be coming to fruition when our own bad hedges go bye bye through out this year. I know you have a hard time dealing with reality. Whatever you do, please fill out a NASA form about that SAV deal, really. When you are done with that, then continue with the McD's resume.


Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[crj567]

Wow, you sure can talk the talk, even though you are as clueless as they come. You really should have let the Capt land at SAV the other day. Do you think Richard Anderson would have allowed Steenland to go to the Board if it gave him MORE power? Steenland wanted to stay in the gravy train management, and RA wouldn't allow it. He is marginalized on the board. He has a say, but it aint enough to change anything. He does NOT run the board either. Nope. WRONG. RA wanted him out of running anything, and he got his way. No merger would have resulted, and that infact stopped the first attempt. You really aint bright it seems.


Southwest is a known entity, and infact has lost a lot of power thanks to lower gas. They actually have the sameor higher costs as many out there now, which makes them LESS of a threat. They have to charge MORE now, thanks to having a level playing field. Point to point stuff they do fairly well, but they lack connections, and NEED a lot of gates to keep their plan working. Even Gary Kelly said no more expansion this year, and small point to point stuff will be met by vigorous competition from the incumbent. Their MSP to MDW flights will be bombarded by NWA when they start it. We'll see how that goes, but they are not as stong as they were with the hedge advantage, and their fixed costs are rising thanks to higher contracts with employees. Should be fun to watch.

Profit or loss statements from the past decade for both carriers don't mean much now. Look at current financials. Yes, DL will have another bad quarter in Q1, but things are scheduled to get better from actual synergies (read ground people and gates) showing results. Southwest NEVER had bad quarters, and look how they are doing now? Not good news from them either. Playing field is becoming equal---not good news for ANY LCC. So, jackhole---maybe you can wrap your brain around some of that and finally figure it out---Southwest's advantage is going away, and our's will be coming to fruition when our own bad hedges go bye bye through out this year. I know you have a hard time dealing with reality. Whatever you do, please fill out a NASA form about that SAV deal, really. When you are done with that, then continue with the McD's resume.


Bye Bye--General Lee

Ha-

Living, breathing proof that the word "synery" or any derivative thereof is only used by complete, absolute fools! Thanks for proving my theory yet again.

Only an absolute fool would think that Steenland is not running anything.... Corprations are controlled by boards of directors-Steenland inserted 4 of his closest allies on DAL's board-along with his own sorry ass. Not running anything? Just let me know how proud you are to have him when he sends YOU a memo advocating exploration of your neighbor's trash-during your next visit to BK.

Keep on racking up the McDonald's (profitable company,) SWA (extremely profitable company-at least compared to your smoking crater of an airline,) and Wal-Mart (also familiar with the ever-illusive profit) references..... You sure are racking up a lot of bad Karma, and I will genuinely LOVE to see it catch up to you.

If you still don't understand why SWA will kick the tar out of you, then you are simply un-teachable. That's O.K., because it will all be great in BK-AGAIN!

BTW-How many BILLION have you lost this year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that, etc. etc. etc.??????

-A truly inspired business model.... I think I will still bet on SWA winning this battle.

 

[General Lee]

Ha-

Living, breathing proof that the word "synery" or any derivative thereof is only used by complete, absolute fools! Thanks for proving my theory yet again.

Only an absolute fool would think that Steenland is not running anything.... Corprations are controlled by boards of directors-Steenland inserted 4 of his closest allies on DAL's board-along with his own sorry ass. Not running anything? Just let me know how proud you are to have him when he sends YOU a memo advocating exploration of your neighbor's trash-during your next visit to BK.

Keep on racking up the McDonald's (profitable company,) SWA (extremely profitable company-at least compared to your smoking crater of an airline,) and Wal-Mart (also familiar with the ever-illusive profit) references..... You sure are racking up a lot of bad Karma, and I will genuinely LOVE to see it catch up to you.

If you still don't understand why SWA will kick the tar out of you, then you are simply un-teachable. That's O.K., because it will all be great in BK-AGAIN!

BTW-How many BILLION have you lost this year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that, etc. etc. etc.??????

-A truly inspired business model.... I think I will still bet on SWA winning this battle.

I guess you don't understand corporate governance. Steenland isn't the CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD. He wanted that job, and RA said NO. He said no merger if that happened. Guess what? RA won. RA was Steenland's boss before, and didn't want a reversal of that. Go look it up on Wikipedia someday.....


How many BILLIONS have Delta lost? A lot, and that was before we went to BK primarily. That is why we and NWA went through the BK process, to rid ourselves of a lot of debt and expensive leases. We now have over $6 billion in cash combined, and even with these loses our cash flow has remained steady. We are ridding ourselves of the expensive hedges each upcoming quarter, and the "synergies" you love to talk about actually are more ground based---reservation systems, ground people, MX functions, gates, future fuel hedging, (we have 16% at current low prices--which amounts to huge savings over the last 4 quarters) and the fleet flexibility to change things around to meet actual needs. We also are parking hundreds of 50 seat RJs, which I know makes you nervous. Big time savings. Our plan has not changed overall---hub and spokes and worldwide coverage. Southwest has added INTL codeshares they won't fly (Volaris and Westjet), and now have added flights to cities they would have avoided in the past due to congestion. (LGA????) Let's see who is going out on a limb because they are now forced to since the playing field is leveling against them.....

BTW, can you get me a 6 piece McNugget with some Ranch Sauce?

Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[maxblast72]

ATL passengers will jump on a SWA plane in a N.Y. second and fly to pretty much anywhere and everywhere in the country they choose (SWA has a kick-ass route structure these days.) Everyone will jump at the chance to go and see Grandma on SWA for $58 each way and stick it to the big airline that has charged $780 for the same trip all these years.

Airtran already goes nonstop to 55 destinations in the United States, Mexico, and Puerto Rico out of Atlanta. Yeah, SWA could add places like El Paso, Amarillo, Salt Lake City, Boise and a few other places out west that are not served by Airtran. But for that $58 ticket, Airtran will make a larger profit as our CASM is lower. Airtran is larger in ATL (250 departure a day) than SWA is in PHX, HOU, MDW, LAS, or BWI (no more than 225 departure a day). Only way SWA is going to have a hub in ATL is if they buy Airtran.

 

[Benjamin Dover]

Southwest NEVER had bad quarters, and look how they are doing now? Not good news from them either. Playing field is becoming equal---not good news for ANY LCC.

So GL - how equal are things really? Common, I know you're all into the always positive for Mother D spin and all, and I respect that, but were you out on extended sick leave from eating bad food at one of those swinging 5 star African resorts when 4Q financials came out?

Delta - 1.4B 4Q loss, 340 M operating loss or 50c/share, much worse than analyst forecast of 34c/share.

SWA - 56M 4Q loss, 61M operating profit or 8c/share, beating analyst forecast or 5c/share.

I'm those facts are quite easily reformatted in the GL spin machine though ...

 

[ACL65PILOT]

read the 8K. You will see a lot different picture.
6.1 BILLION in unrestricted cash to start with.

We will also post horrible numbers next week. Look at the 8K once again.

About 1.221. billion pre tax profit for 09. Base on only a 10% drop in revenue.

 

[johnsonrod]

SWA doesn't have the same advantage nowadays without the fuel hedge. The service is average with no IFE unlike most other airlines. SWA will always be a competitive threat but not to the same degree as before. I agree that limited gate access and significant incumbant competition (i.e., NWA/DAL at MSP and DTW with their current pax feed) will limit some of its growth at their new destinations.

 

[DTW320]

I'm not proud of the pay raise, but you guys got a big bump. Let me talk real slow for you, about 0 guys at DAL have what you are talking about (1785 a month).

A NWA 320CA now can be 7ER CA. At NWA that was all he could hold.

So if really think about it ya'll got more. So stop your bitching.

So, Zero guys at Delta are getting the PBGC guarantee? PBGC guarantee is how much? And what % of NWA pilots have a frozen pension that exceeds the PBGC guarantee? And you got Nothing from DAL for terminating the A-Plan?

Maybe you're Still not talkin slow enough.