SuperPilotJesse

I don't do coffee either. But I'm always in the mood for some English Breakfast.

ExperimentalAB

Maybe I'm not getting it, but any good Pilot knows that Coffee is an essential tool in completing a flight!

DANCRJ

Thank you

Apparently, I'm not the only one who refuses to drink the kool aid.

Lighteningspeed

My take on this is that Pinnacle will probably survive this merger and wind up with maybe some more DAL regional flying because I think Anderson will farm out more US domestic flying to Pinnacle and among others such as Mesaba and Compass. I do not fly for 9E so don't take this as a wishful thinking. It is a projection based on the information I have gathered up to this point.

What will happen to other regionals like Mesaba, Compass, Comair Skywest and others is on many people's mind nowadays so I will make my forecast here. Based on what's been happening at Mesaba and Compass, I think the Mesaba Compass Holding corporation will wind up running Mesaba and Compass. Anderson of the New DAL will probably replace the current top management team running the show at Compass and Mesaba. I seriously doubt the current management team at Compass surviving this merger. It is hard to predict what will happen to Comair. But the indications are that Comair may come up on the sale block soon after the merger. Some regionals will be minimized, and indications are fairly clear which ones will go away but I am not going to name them for obvious reasons.

Mesaba has been picking up most of the former DC9 routes and new destinations are added every month.

andy171773

Why do you feel as if comair is going to be sold post merger? What made you come to this conclusion?

Lighteningspeed

It is a speculation but if you recall DAL was going to sell before the merger as DAL management felt it was burned by the Comair strike. There are couple of factors against Comair as far as DAL management is concerned and the foremost is that Comair is heavy with 50 seat RJs, which are no longer economically viable for DAL and Anderson needs to unload them and the quickest way to do that is to sell and it also raises cash. The other is there is a bad blood between DAL management team and Comair and more than a few aviation analysts have forecasted the sale of Comair as the likely scenario. But then again, who knows what the new DAL will do. They may just keep Comair and try to convert CRJ200s to all CRJ7 and 9s.

andy171773

The rumor mill around here is that we are getting more 90's than anticipated. Our presidente mentioned more 90's to a new hire FA class.

I'm really not gonna bite on the "burned by comair strike thing". It's obviously a fact, DL did get shafted when that happened, but it was also about 5 years ago. They did/have wanted to sell comair for a while. But the difficulty selling comair, is the exact problem Delta is having. NO ONE wants to buy a 50 seat heavy airline.

I don't think DL will shed us at this point, hey..maybe even seeing what NW has done with it's two regionals and how it can be a harmonious partnership may change its recent strategy of pitting the regionals against each other...Put us all in a boardroom and have us peck each others eyes out to the tune of "how low can you go?".

Anderson seems like a smart guy, he might realize that "hey, we let Mesa take a *(#$@(#$ load of flying..and now look what's going on"

Cheapest isn't bestest, Comair can be DL's fall back. Even if we're a bit of a cashcow "up front" this company has made A MASSIVE amount of money for daddy D.

Who knows though, anything can happen.

Lighteningspeed

Since you work for Comair, you might be right at that. I did read that DAL likes the CRJ9 performance result coming in to DAL and to NWA versus the E175s, so it would not surprise me one bit if DAL plans to order more CRJ9s for Comair and replace CRJ200s. This is especially true when the fuel price keeps skyrocketing. Even a 10% fuel savings could change the dynamics.

tvpilot

Delta President Ed Bastian said Thurs 17 APR that the Comair 50 seaters are being replaced with 70 and 90 seaters, and said CVG and Comair are a big part of Delta's plans for the future... He delivered a new 90 yesturday when the DL management team flew into CVG for a press conference and meeting with KY Governor and local politians. Hs comments further emphasized that Comair's role in the North East is a big factor in its value to the system. --- DL picked comair to replace the Big Sky flying already, and the innitial plans to park 12 planes was reduced to just parking 8--- Comair PR lady even hinted that pilot hiring was going to start back up.

PinnacleFO

I gaurantee you that Pinnacle will be around after the merger is over.