Originally Posted by
cfabar1
I think a bare-bones operation will be to Delta’s detriment. THey are going to need to make travel and specifically air travel feel luxurious, safe, and serene. Anything that undermines that will really hurt them. They’ve tried the “packing them in like sardines” strategy. That is over. Time to add cachet and the veneer of safety and “away from the riff-raff and their germs” type of attitude.
I'm going to "split the baby" here: I think the SCs at non-hubs may go away entirely (places like JAX come to mind) but I think there may be an effort to beef up some of the remaining ones (JFK, LAX, and ATL are high on the list here). I think you might see a partial retrenchment at those hubs (I could see one or two SCs in ATL getting cut back, particularly if there's enough of a traffic drop/frequency drop that DL temporarily cuts back traffic in one or two of the ATL terminals.
Basically, I'm thinking somewhere around half of the SCs survive but the remaining ones see a decent level of service retained, especially if we end up with a more hub-and-spoke heavy Delta and the number of flights that are either double-connections or clumsy connections are up.
Also, don't forget...there's a respectable number of SC members and (almost more relevant) Reserve CC holders. I think you can make a case that dropping SCs at lower-traffic outstations isn't going to factor as heavily into those calculations, but I do think that as long as SC memberships (direct or indirect) hold up reasonably well that's going to keep a floor under SC service levels.
(Or, to put it differently, if I'm going to get a better experience at PF Chang's at ATL then the value of that SC membership becomes dubious unless I'm traveling a
lot.)