Originally Posted by sllevin

NW knows that there will be significant defections. They've said repeatedly they are giving up on the marginal customer. If you need perks or price to fly NW, well, they aren't interested. They are going to focus on squeezing the customers who are willing to avoid inconvience -- that is, people who live in hub cities and smaller cities where NW is the primary carrier. Honestly, if you live on a coast and need incentive to fly NW, they are moving to a model where they'd rather not have your business, and just fly smaller planes with fewer frequencies instead.

Now, whether an airline can survive with a tight focus on those customer bases remains to be seen. My personal opinion is that such an operation becomes extremely attractive to low fare competition. Once you assume O&D routes only from your hubs, for example, you become ripe for Southwest to move into MSP, for example, and start flying some of the more profitable hub-to-endpoint routes and then dictate your pricing.

Steve