I've found watching the game to be interesting. Since both American and Delta would presumably need to pull planes from other lucrative routes in order to start a new HND route (before their Aribus orders are filled), bluffing and delaying figure prominently into their moves. But, the DOT seems to be losing patience; whoever wins this round will have to figure out a way to launch daily service before whatever deadline is established, or else they'll risk disadvantaging themselves in future competitive slot allocations (e.g. China). Meanwhile, United has remained mostly silent. Not only could they theoretically serve GUM-HND with any mainline a/c, but their 777/787 fleets have sufficient slack to pull the trigger on IAH-HND almost immediately (I use this term loosely, of course).

I still believe that the DOT would prefer AA or DL winning this round because this would level the playing field a tiny bit. But, ultimately, its mandate is to serve the US public, and we benefit more from active routes than empty promises.