I apoligize that some of what I'll say I've said before.

This is a very sad day for us "red tails" as "Dulltification" will also mean the loss of this forum (at least the merger promises to be more of a real merger as opposed to DL's hostile takeover of NW).

I was on DL flights Friday -- MKE-ATL-DEN -- and there were stark reminders of what's to come. Dirty floors in the lavatories. Broken seat tables, malfunctioning lavatory faucets, dangling pieces of miscellaneous stuff. At ATL there was the usual chaos plus the SkyClub at B25 was dirty -- filthy walls, sticky floors and a general bad attitude.

A DL FF I was talking to demonstrated a lot of what we've seen on the DL forums -- a true lack of understanding about why so many of us are very upset (to be politically correct). As a forum veteran, and a DL veteran, I tried to explain.

As many of you know, I flew DL for 27 years before Leo Mullen decided frequent flyers weren't so important. I put up with the ATL/CVG hub hassles, dirty planes and the delights of Almost Southern Airlines and Communist Air. The one thing that was a costant though most of that era -- before Leo -- was the superb front line DL people. As bad as the airline was, most of the front line folks were pretty damn good. It was the only thing I really missed in going to NW.

That said, the late Beth Schulteis welcomed us DL exiles. Our upgrade opportunities were much better, planes cleaner and front line staff usually pretty good. No IFE, to be sure, and there were glitches along the way. I've made my share of complaints about NW but there was also one constant and that is that if NW did something really bad, you could always connect with Jim Cron or one of the other executives and get it taken care of. (You didn't pester the brass with petty stuff, but if it was a real boner, there was someone who could intercede...not so much at Delta which insulates itself from its customers.)

NW was also pretty much a constant as well. Its hubs were generally cleaner airports. Cleaner planes. More meals in first. The product was far from perfect but you usually knew what to expect.

Except for faster posting of mileage, NW's web site was far better than DL. And NW was better at being more flexible with its policies to accomodate customers. (Just this week I had an accomodation made because, quite frankly, we weren't sure how DL would handle the situation in the future.)

Over the past few months we've also seen some very dumb and costly "merger" milestones, such as unnecessary painting of planes, relabeling luggage carts and TUG vehicles, etc. We've seen slower checkins, downgraded amenities at the clubs and so on. Repainting a plane is like $60K-100K...money that could have been better spent on things that matter to paying customers.

As I've said before, the "merger" never really was a "merger" and it failed for the most part to take into account the dissimilar NW and DL cultures. In short, we drank Pepsi and in Atlanta it's Coke. This is not to say that a real "merger" could not have been effectuated but an intelligent one would have recognized the dissimilarities in the respective cultures and respected them as opposed to what amount to a forced hostile takeover of the DL way or no way.

The new airline certainly could have achieved cost savings by consolidation and collaboration whenever and wherever possible but any smart business person knows that consolidation isn't always the golden goose. There's a reason why states don't let cousins marry and the Justice Dept. scored another boner when it failed to block this one.

The late Sam Walton wrote that he learned an important lesson when Wal-Mart expanded out of the south and tried in vain to sell Moon Pies in Wisconsin. That lesson was a respect for the concerns and values of the customers in those markets and not trying to force a "one size fits all" model.

Too bad Richard Anderson never found the time to read Sam's autobiography.

I could go on and on but, once a red tail, always a red tail. Yes, there were times NW seemed like the proverbial Northworst, but on balance while DL may ostensibly offered more trinkets (such as IFE) the one thing NW gave us in greater quantity was respect.

Goodbye, red tail.