johnso29

Gee I wonder why!

Good find Bar.

Dash8widget

Everyone understands - I'm sure - that this is NOT new flying for AS, they already fly to most if not all of the cities listed from LAX. DL is only asking to allow our code to be used on those already existing flights. If DL were to add our own flying on these routes we would then be in direct competition with AS. By the way - I do NOT agree with what is happening, but sadly, I think it does fall within the code share agreement that we (the DL) pilots allowed in the JCBA since this would be feed to DL flights in LAX.

Tomcat

You could be correct. I paid attention to the language in Section One, but without several other documents that were referenced, it meant virtually nothing. This is where my Reps came in to assure that Alaska would NOT be doing our Mexico flying. Specifically the reason I bid the new LAX73NG category in the first place.

slowplay

Alaska already flies every one of these routes. Delta doesn't, and hasn't flown some of them in a very long time (mid 90's for Ixtapa/Zihuatenejo and Mazatlan).

We have (prior to H1N1) flown PVR and GDL from LAX, but that influenza virus has (temporarily, I hope) killed the business. One of the three Mexican majors, AVIACSA, shut down. If you go through Mexico City, you'll see a whole bunch of airplanes in AeroMexico and Mexicana colors parked. Delta has downgauged all the remaining Mexico flights (a lot fewer 757's, a lot more 737-700/800) and decreased frequency on many routes.

There was a story last week on Swine flu, and how as many as 50% of US residents could get it this winter. The flu decimated Asian travel to North America. If it returns this fall, there are going to be a whole bunch of empty flights going south of the border. My bet is that one of the other Mexican majors will fail or merge.

Delta was allowed to codeshare with AK as a result of the NWA merger. NWA used AK to feed their Gateway cities. With the drop off in Mexican tourism and the world recession, these routes were either going to be abandoned by Delta or codeshared. It does not make economic sense to compete against an incumbent carrier (AK) when you don't have a competitive advantage. The code share will experience its own difficulties, as AK is currently on the other side of the airport in a different terminal.

jmo, and I'm probably wrong.

Tomcat

Slowplay, thanks for your response. Mexico (PVR & CUN) has been the bulk of my flying over the last 18 months. It has slowed considerably in the last 2-3 months. I completely understand what your saying, but I just have to say that once again, we are losing flying for whatever reason and it is unlikely to return to Delta. Just very disappointing. I hope that you can understand and appreciate the perspective of the average "linedog".

There always seems to be some reason that we lose our flying, but never many reasons to regain it.

V/R, TC

slowplay

Tomcat,

I understand your frustration. After the Western merger Delta was the dominant carrier for a very short period of time at LAX. We made money 87-91, then lost our butts. We abandoned all but MEX and GDL (we used to fly IXT, ZIH, ACA, PVR, MZT from LAX). We also downgauged tremendously, going from DC-10's to MEX to 737-300's, and decreased frequency from 5 per day to one or two depending on season. Same for GDL, cutting flights back to one per day. I point that out because we did regain some MEX flying over the last 3 years, in destinations, frequency, and gauge. Unfortunately for you, most of it came from east coast growth. LAX has, to be polite, some vicious competition for north-south flows. O&D traffic in a leisure market (all the beach destinations) isn't a great way to make money if you're a full service network airline.

I know it's not what you want to hear, but it's the way I see it.

Tomcat

Slowplay,
it is what it is....... just the continued degradation of our careers at Delta. I turned down FEDEX 10 years ago to come here. I was furloughed, my buddy that got hired at FEDEX 9 months after my hire date at Delta made captain while I was on furlough. I Know, that's the breaks, life is tough, but will this ever stop? I'm just venting, but you understand the frustration and restlessness. You never know how it turns out until the end of your career, but it's been one hell of a turbulent ride so far. We live with our choices.

V/R, TC

acl65pilot

I know that they have looked at Alaska over the last few years, there has been talk about it, but now that we are really getting the milk for free is there a reason to buy them?
I hope so. My fear is that WN will make a very strong offer for Alaska here in the near future knowing what the poison pill entails. Reason being that if we lost that lift via code share it would once again make a huge hole in our route network that we could not fill. That scares me. It is what scares me from a corporate perspective. We put our faith in a business deal with another public company that could be bought, and as a result undermine our business plan.
I guess we may need to get burned by this for the company to learn. Poison pills only go so far.

Tomcat

Good perspective. It's hard to understand why we continue to be so shortsighted and loose control of our product. I've been saying this since day one at Delta. I guess none of us will ever get it.

RockyBoy

Don't you think we could beat WN in a bidding war if we needed too? I think between us and AF/KLM, we can come up with enough coin to win that battle. If we bought AK and took advantage of the overlapping costs and economies of scale with the 737 fleet, maybe we could actually beat WN at their own game on the west coast. We're gonna need something other than a codeshare for LAX and SEA. Their flight ops costs are obviously much higher than ours and I've actually heard that our CASM on the narrowbody fleet is lower than theirs, but that was just hearsay so I'm not sure.