So what's the answer to all this?
It's tempting to blame unionized workforces and seniority-based contracts, but DL FAs aren't unionized, and I haven't been overly impressed by them, whereas AS FAs are unionized, and they seem much friendlier than their mainline legacy carrier counterparts. So it can't be just the union / seniority issue. What else is at play? How can the mainlines -- UA, DL, AA -- address this problem? I'm sure there are lots of people with a good insider understanding of this situation who can comment.