Except that there have not been a couple thousand PMNW employees who were thrown under the bus - talk about whipping up a frenzy. More importantly, the reason why the TW people are so ticked off (still are) is that they were stapled to the bottom of a list and then when the company had to shrink - they were the first to go and their existence at AA was riddled with footnotes that prevented them from becoming full-fledged AA employees. That hasn't happened with any DL merger, and all of those limitations that might have existed ended the day after the representation votes were finally decided. There is nothing today that distinguishes a PMDL from a PMNW employee, targets them for cuts, or says that the assets they brought to the merger are worth any less. And the fact is that CVG has been cut MORE than MEM was - the process just started earlier.
I'm so glad you brought up DFW and Florida because they are key parts of the most dramatic network restructuring that has occurred at a US network/legacy airline.
DL took its 250 or so flight operation at DFW along with its heavy use of int'l capable widebodies - largely focused on FL closed DFW as a hub, sent the widebodies overseas to new markets in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and later Asia, and backfilled that domestic widebody capacity with narrowbodies that came from the DFW hub PLUS built JFK into a hub, where more than 2 years ago, DL surpassed AA as the largest carrier.
In the process, and this is absolutely critical, DL has remained the largest network carrier in every FL city except for MIA AND gave up about 8% of its local market share at DFW (worth less than $100M per year) to redeploy those assets in markets that generate BILLIONS of revenue.
What DL did with closing the DFW hub made all the financial sense in the world - and DL still remains the #2 airline at DFW - a position that is growing even today as DL now serves DFW-LGA - one of AA's top revenue markets - while FL has had to pull out of the DFW market and DL was already the largest carrier on ATL-DFW and is growing its share between AA and DL proportionately larger.
DL still has a network gap with no southwest/Texas hub, something they tried to backfill for a time w/ the CO codeshare. But the revenue produced from the NYC and increased in'tl operations are worth far more than what DL gave up at DFW.
Since no US network carrier has a fully complete network, then the key is to build as much revenue from the network that each carrier has.
More importantly, DL's RELATIVE revenue position at DFW and in every one of its former hubs remains unchanged.
It matters not whether STL, RDU, SJC, or BNA were pulled down as hubs this year or 20 years ago. AA has done a very poor job of maintaining its revenue in key markets after it has pulled down hubs.
I'm not saying that AA's reasons for closing those hubs didn't make sense. We all know that the resources from BNA and RDU were used to build MIA which is a powerful hub. But in the process of pulling down those and other hubs, AA is left w/ big holes in its network and with other carriers now being the dominant carrier in markets where AA is still dominant.
AA is making good progress on rebuilding its revenue - but it it is also important to recognize that AA has enormous challenges to rebuild a network that is capable of competing with DL and UA - and the AA/US merger simply doesn't deliver it.
