Originally Posted by
readywhenyouare
Delta is rapidly losing money with no end in sight. A few will give the "but their cash reserves..." excuse but there is no way Delta would burn through all of their cash before filing for bankruptcy protection. So what would a hypothetical bankruptcy look like as far as employees, hubs, aircraft, and frequent flyer program look like?
As far as hubs go I think they stay about the same with the exception of BOS. It isn't profitable at all and serves no real purpose to the network. It was a vanity project to take on B6 and it hasn't paid off. SLC could probably stand to take more cuts with the retirement of the CRJ-200. I doubt some of the SLC only cities could sustain anything larger. DTW and ATL could also probably see a reduction of domestic flights with international travel being in the toilet. I'm guessing MSP is Delta's most profitable hub since it has a very wealthy demographic and very little LCC competition. I doubt much would change and maybe get some flights upgraded to mainline and serving more as an easy/west connecting facility. SEA and LAX would handle TPAC flying and JFK handling the bulk of TATL flying.
The fleet would remain about the same.
Pilots and flight attendants is where Delta could have a huge opportunity to see labor savings. If a bankruptcy court throws out the pilot contract there would be nothing stopping Delta from bidding out all of the flying. For example, giving Skywest a contract to operate the 737 fleet, Endeavor the A320 fleet, Republic the 757/767 fleet, etc. This would result in significant cost savings and give Delta a huge advantage over their competitors. And it's not without precedence. Lufthansa has done that with with Eurowings. KLM with Martinair. Air France has done this with the A340 using CityJet and Joon to operate them. And then BA/Iberia with LEVEL. A high pilot salary has no relationship with safety. Look at Ryanair and Norwegian as an example for that. Perfect safety records.
Delta Tech Ops is a profit center so I don't see any changes being made there.
Umm, Delta (along with Southwest), would be about the last two airlines to file for bankruptcy, so the whole premise is flawed. AA, UA, HA, B6 are all more likely to have to file for Bankruptcy protection first.