Notes from the Delta Conference Call...

[Sedona16]

16. Money is being spent on the electronic bag tracking system and this continues to be a top priority to be top of the industry.

 

[Sedona16]

17. Subsidiary business will continue to produce a significant amount of revenue such as:

Cargo
Maintainence services
Selling frequent flyer miles
Selling ala cart revenue generators.

LCC will be operating at a disadvantage with inability to grab much if any premium revenue.

 

[Sedona16]

18. Fuel Hedging:

Systematic

Delta is currently using a combination of call options, swaps and collars. Most of the current swaps and collars will be out by second quarter 2009.

Currently purchasing fuel hedges for 2010.

 

[Sedona16]

19. Current aircraft orders (20) not inlcuding 787's

777, 737-700 and CRJ900

No major refleating at Delta. They are content with what is on property and adding a few airframes as it makes sense but no big captital expenditures in the near term and refleating is still quite some time out.

 

[Sedona16]

20. Pension funding is an increasing expense (presumably part of this is the now inherited NWA pilots pensions).

 

[Sedona16]

21. There are 80 hotels that are already shared by Delta/NWA crew....more on the way.

 

[Sedona16]

22. I kept hearing "getting the costs out" and referring to aircraft and people. Of course the non pilots are being offered early retirement programs. I'll let everyone here connect their own dots on how the costs with airplanes and pilots we dont need will be removed.

 

[Sedona16]

Thats about all I got but I was listening loosely. Anybody else care to chime in with your thoughts please do.

 

[ACL65PILOT]

More to come!

 

[Sedona16]

OK I checked the slides and the aircraft still coming are

6 777
6 737-700
8 CRJ900

A couple other points I thought were worth noting from the slides. Based upon the revenue/profits debt will be paid down very rapidly...from its current 15 billion (this is total combined debt of the two carriers) down to 6.2 billion within three years. Liquidity will stay high maybe even increasing from the almost 7 billion in the bank right now (including the 1 billion received from AMEX today). Also there will be very little taxes to be paid with all the write downs carried over from the past couple years (almost 15 billion when combining both DAL and NWA).