US Sec'y of Transp. considers DL-NW merger

[Borescope]

Analysts do not expect Delta-Northwest merger
Airline experts say a merger of Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines is highly unlikely. U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta suggested the two airlines could merge following a speech he made Tuesday in Shanghai. Both carriers filed for bankruptcy protection last year. The Cincinnati Enquirer (1/11), Airwise (1/11)

 

[WorldTraveler]

conventional wisdom says that mergers are expensive and not likely to happen. CW also says that airlines don't make it out of bankruptcy but we're now on 2 for 2 in this cycle and 2 more are likely to join them. No analyst is saying they expect DL or NW to fail to restructure. When that happens, the industry will have achieved the highest bankruptcy survival rate in the industry's history (obviously some airlines have not successfully restructured in the post 9/11 environment but the biggest airlines will).

I'm not predicting DL/NW will happen tomorrow but I do believe w/ the DOT sec'y that there will be consolidation in the industry and unlike AA/TW, it will be among willing and able participants making a choice to join forces with someone else rather than to stay alone. Up to this point, airlines have often merged because they had to in order to survive.

Conventional wisdom is quickly being thrown out the window.

 

[SBN580]

...As for CVG and MEM both are not necessary for a combined DL/NW merger...

Why does it seem that CVG is always cast off as not important or useful? Anyone who has ever been through there as a passenger can tell you what a nice, clean and efficient hub facility it is. It would be a waste to just throw it away.

 

[Ch. 12]

Why does it seem that CVG is always cast off as not important or useful? Anyone who has ever been through there as a passenger can tell you what a nice, clean and efficient hub facility it is. It would be a waste to just throw it away.

The answer is in your post. You state that anyone who has been "through" CVG... The issue is that CVG has nice facilities but no local traffic. A hub needs to be more than just a place to connect pax and if all you are doing is connecting the vast majority of your pax, it doesn't make sense to have a hub there. Geography means nothing. MCI or OKC would make the best hub in all of the US based on geography but have no local traffic to support them. CVG is much the same. Sure you have a few major companies such as Chiquita and P&G located there but you cannot make it alone on corporate travel discounts for your local pax and a vast majority of connecting pax.

 

[WorldTraveler]

However, DL may be in a good position in fending off other carriers that may come to prey even if DL further downsizes CVG because CVG is surrounded by cities that are already served by LCCs. If DL remains a strong enough presence to keep the local market flying on them and yet further downsizes the flow traffic, they have a good chance of keeping the CVG market for themselves. My gut says there is still more capacity in CVG than is needed but downsizing in phases over several years might be less painful than doing it all at one time.

 

[Hula Girl]

Mineta is an idiot. For those crew members still flying, please read this book, Flying Blind.

Author: Airlines Post 9/11 Still Unsafe
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2004
If there is a paramount villain in Michael A. Smerconish’s just released “Flying Blind – How Political Correctness Continues to Compromise Airline Safety Post 9/11â€￾ (Running Press, 232 pages), it has to be Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta. Simerconish, who hosts a daily radio talk show on The Big Talker in Philadelphia and writes columns for the Philadelphia Daily News, is a pragmatist who just can’t wrap his rational mind around how “profilingâ€￾ of young Middle Eastern men at our nation’s airports is still anathema to the Transportation Safety Agency – just as it was before the catastrophic attacks of 9/11.

After all, argues Simerconish, in a tirade that lasts from the first page to the last, it was a cadre of Saudi Arabians – not little old ladies in walkers – that made it aboard those three doomed airliners.
So what gives?
In his search for answers to our steadfast political correctness in those long lines at the airports, the author – and the dumbfounded reader for that matter – can come up with only one explanation: Mr. Mineta’s mindset.
Ironically, the Simerconish theory is just as politically incorrect as the TSA’s rules are PC.


Mineta and his family were among the 120,000 Japanese Americans forced into interment camps during WWII. His experience, concludes the author, has “clouded his ability to be an impartial arbiter of appropriate airport screening in a post-9/11 world.â€￾


An example of the mindset is a vignette drawn by Smerconish from an interview with the secretary by CBS’s Steve Croft on “60 Minutes:â€￾


KROFT: Are you saying, at security screening desks, that a 70-year-old white woman from Vero Beach, Florida would receive the same level of scrutiny as a Muslim young man from Jersey City?

MINETA: Basically, I would hope so.
But, explains the author, the Mineta mindset has reached well beyond dialogue in media interviews. Under his command, the TSA has been second-guessing command pilots who have tossed Middle Eastern types off their aircraft after being advised by the crew of suspicious, uncooperative behavior.

Even when coupled with questionable travel documents or similarity with watch list names, the agency has heavily fined those carriers whose pilots haven’t played nice-nice with this or that swarthy passenger.
Unfathomable, argues the author, who points to the fact that a twentieth hijacker was kept from boarding by a watchful Customs officer.

Customs officer Jose Melendez-Perez stopped the twentieth hijacker, who was supposed to be on Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. This left that attack team short one man from the planned team of five thugs -- probably making it possible for the brave passengers to wrestle control of the aircraft and keep it from its intended target in Washington, D.C.

Incredibly, his colleagues and supervisors badgered the politically incorrect officer the whole way, warning that he was going to get in trouble with the Department of Transportation’s policy against racial profiling.

That tossed thug was later captured in Afghanistan and shipped to Gitmo.

Thank God for Melendez-Perez, says the author.

A real lesson for post-9/11?

Not at all, reveals Smerconish, who argues that there was a policy (described by 9/11 Commission witnesses) in effect to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning. And there’s no substantive difference in these dangerous times.

Smerconish’s last best hope was that the 9/11 Commission would firmly address the profiling gap in its final report and recommendation. But, alas, finds the author, “Having scanned the 567 pages of the 9/11 Commission report, a serious treatment of ‘terrorist profiling’ is nowhere to be found.â€￾

The author ends on a frustrating note: “Even if all the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission are put into place, we will come up short in the war against terror unless we emulate Mr. Melendez-Perez. We need to profile. We still have work to do.â€￾

“In the immortal words of Todd Beamer, ‘Let’s roll!’â€￾

WARNING: “Flying Blindâ€￾ will leave the reader frustrated and fearful.

 

[Ch. 12]

Hula-

With all due respect, to say that we should screen all Middle Easterners b/c the hijackers hailed from Saudi Arabia is the same as saying we should be screening all Asians b/c Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Actually...it is much more comical to say the former b/c while Japan was a country, the hijackers represented a very small minority of even the country they came from.

If we want to direct our searches to a specific group, maybe we should give extra screening to those with passports from Saudi Arabia, but then again...it isn't the majority of the country that attacked us on 9/11. And only screening those from Saudi Arabia would never work b/c people in the US tend to categorize large groups incorrectly (how many times do I hear anyone of Asian heritage being called simply "Chinese"?) Problem is that we are not "worldly" enough in the U.S. to accurately narrow down a group to focus on so to try to would be to violate so many more people than necessary...with the same chance of missing the one or two that would cause problems. Mr. Bush has done well to narrow American's viewpoints, though, and take us back 100 years to a cowboys and indians way of thought. I don't think it would be right to shoot all of the indians just b/c our "great" leader has created a hype to protect his position and strike fear into the American public.

Ok...sorry to have gotten onto my soapbox but I can't stand seeing arguements saying how we should violate hundreds of millions of people in order to still have as much of a chance to miss the one or two bad ones. Giving people personal freedoms is the basis of our country.