You're still not making sense. Removing service is a good thing. Right now there is way too much capacity out there to be able to charge a reasonable price. Contrary to what many people on this board think, airlines are like gas stations...you can only charge a different (higher) price is you're pricing isn't transparent. By that, I mean that the Exxon across the street from the Shell is rarely charging a different price than the Shell. If they are, it's typically for a short period of time. Unleaded gas is unleaded gas. Service from Atlanta to New York is the same on Delta as it is AirTran in most people's minds. Oil companies have increased prices by reducing the output (via closing refineries). It's only recently that supply & demand fundamentals have not been a part of oil pricing. Airlines can't individually reduce service and find success. Removing service would also make the entire system more efficient as the skies-lanes would not be as crowded...good thing for customers.
As for alliances, they are seemless for some customers but in reality, the two airlines still compete some because it's still always beeter to have all the money from people flying my metal than some of the money because I sold a ticket to someone to fly on your metal. Do you not believe that some of the airlines who have been introducing service to Houston yet have a codeshare with CO aren't thinking this. They've gotten to a point where enough people were transferring from their flights to Europe onto CO's flights to the US that the checks they were writing were able to support their own service. They have an alliance right up until it makes more sense for me to offer the service on my own (i.e. it's no longer mutually beneficial).
As for your reasoning behind job losses...I'm a little perplexed. How can you be against that yet ok with overall carrier failure? Overall failure of a carrier is likely to result in far more job losses, especially for those less likely to find a replacement position. For example, if NW & DL were to merge, you would likely see people on the very bottom laid off and probably more people kept than necessary as a result of unions negotiating peace for jobs. Conversely, if one of the two fails, let's say NW just for arguement sake, who will get hired by the carriers picking up service? Well, the remaining carriers are likely to pick up the youngest people they can without breaking discrimination laws. Additionally, they may not pick up the service in DTW & MSP...maybe they want service to Asia, but they want it from ORD, ATL, EWR, LAX, SFO, DFW, et. al...
