Congratulations to Delta Airlines!

[phasersonstun2]

Let's all pat another airline on the back for yet ANOTHER "successful bankruptcy". Am I the only person who finds those two words just a little bit odd? U (twice) and UAL (three years under "protection" of bankruptcy) are one big reason why Delta had to file in the first place. Delta's filing just brought on NWA's filing. Sorry guys...but as heartless as it sounds, in my book it would be better to let the weak fail and let the stronger ones grow. I would hope that we see a shift from blaming the "low cost" carriers for the problems facing the stronger airlines. It's the "successfully bankrupt" carriers that are lowering the bar for everybody else.

It's the low fare carriers who screwed up the paradigm forcing legacy carriers to lower their wages below even the low fare pilots, and use BK to shift into the "new world" business model that still fails to deliver a product that we once had.

 

[KCFlyer]

It's the low fare carriers who screwed up the paradigm forcing legacy carriers to lower their wages below even the low fare pilots, and use BK to shift into the "new world" business model that still fails to deliver a product that we once had.

Quite the double edged sword. Deregulation, and the rise of the low fare carriers occured almost 30 years ago. Because of those low fare carriers, many gone, a few still around, there was an increase in demand for airline travel. Because of that demand, all of the legacies bought more planes and hired more people to handle that increase. Yes...we could sit back in the good old days of degregulation when a quick and dirty formula would have spit out the new fare for given routes. But....there would have been a fraction of people hired by all the airlines within the past 30 years had that been the case, because only the "truly elite" would have been able to afford to fly.

And I have to wonder...what kind of shape would the "legacy" airlines be in had they not felt that market share was king...and slashed fares below those "low fare" carriers in order to maintain the lead in that beloved market share. Isn't it better to be number 2 in market share, yet profitable, than number 1 and bleeding money? Most of the surviving low fare carriers seem to think so.