It strikes me that most people must still maintain their emotional ties to the style of travel in the 90's, I miss those days too, but today the world and this industry is radically different.

What Delta is doing is something that happens every day at companies around the world, changing products and pricing to reflect the market demands. This is marketing, they are doing what is necessary to stay in business. As mentioned earlier, the other majors will ultimately have to also evolve to stay in business.

What I actually think this will do is moderate the pricing, and bring the ultra-low and the ultra-high pricing in to a reasonable window. From a business persepective, the way legacy carrier pricing was a lot like welfare, the business fare paying passengers were subsidizing the loss leader super saver fare paying passengers tickets. That model was broken and has to change.

Myself I often remember fondly the days of grand travel experiences, but today we have to deal with the reality that airlines can only respond to what the market demands are, low prices, mediocre service. I used to consider my travels, over 3 million miles over the last 10 years, to be a perk, now it is just a long, painful commute to work. After the first year of post 9/11, it finally sank in, this is the future, get used to it.

The emotional ties to the airlines need to fade, my friends. Travel now is just a comodity, like gas or groceries, you can go to Whole Foods and buy the $9.99 brie, or Wal-Mart for the 0.99 Velveeta. Or somewhere in between. that is where the industry is heading. That or re-regulation, I think.

Our problem is, too many Wal-Marts in retail, and too many Wal-Mart airlines... it is not that different from a business persepective.

Regards,