DFW doesn't make money for DL and losing it wouldn't be that big of a blow to the system.
According to analysts, the brightest spot in DAL's system in Q403 was DFW because of the RJ expansion. That's why they're doing the same thing with SLC.
An issue to bring up is mentality. Commuters used to be commuters. It was not a career but an entry level position. Management were not managers and businessmen, but people who moved up within the company. Now commuters are large companies on the verge of being majors themselves. The problem is that mgmt is still the same guys with the puddle-jumper mentality treating the pilots like puddle-jumper pilots and the operation like a puddle-jumping operation. The fact is you can't run a large company with a goober mentality.
As RJs have become the mainstream (not mainline but mainstream) for air travel, pax have fought back and said we're no longer on some prop for thirty minutes anxious to get to the hub and get on a real plane. We used to tell them to sit down, shut up and drink their water, and they tolerated it because it was a small part of air travel. That doesn't work on a two hour RJ flight that is connecting to another two hour RJ flight. Now that RJs have become the mainstream for air travel, the passengers expect to get mainstream treatment when flying on them.
We also should expect mainstream pay and benefits for flying the aircraft that has become the mainstream aircraft. Like it or not, many of us won't be here for just a short time waiting to go somewhere else. This may be a career position. And a career position deserves career pay and benefits, and a better QOL and corporate culture.
Now the regional expansion has forced such a down-size in mainline, that what advancement there is to the mainline will be slow. In our own growth we have eliminated many of the vacancies at the mainline that we were hoping to someday fill. The result is that we have created a career position in an RJ. And if the RJ is going to be a career position, then there will have to be career pay to fly it.