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? :confused:

Comment was exactly what I said. Customers call Delta to book tickets from JFK to LHR but they only can get booked on the limited Delta service because of their limited slots.

It increases the total pool of ticket buyers with even more connection flights as well.

It expands UK flights to destinations not available before.

The thing that doesn't square with all the ST talk with VS is virgin group's interests in Virgin America. It's finally starting to come around on operating income. VX doesn't have the metal/lift to really matter right now, but it has 10 A320s coming over the next 6 years and 30 A320Neo's starting 2020. One would assume they will be locking horns with DL in the domestic market sooner or later.

They are based mostly in the west coast where DL does not have much of a presence. Plus DL was unhappy at the loss of CO as a partner so I think they would welcome that.

Source? (I'll give you a hint: Airliners.net won't count)

:D

http://www.airfranceklm.com/en/group...te-governance/

Seems to me 50/50 between French and Dutch executives.

It's all so European, so it's not like there is a bunch of french people sitting in AMS. Each airline has a management team. KL's is dutch, AF's is french. The parent holding company has a CEO. Jean-Cyril Spinetta and he's french. The Vice chairman is Dutch. The board is 15 people and to make sure no ones feeling are hurt they alternate meetings between AMS and CDG.

http://www.airfranceklm-finance.com/...tive-Committee

Be that as it may, a small percentage of the company is owned by the French Gov't and slightly more of the public share holders are French. As long as that's the case I would assume the CEO will remain French. But it will likely be decades before they would even consider an actual merger akin to DL and NW.

I had it explained to me by a KL regional manger in Africa (albeit a couple of years ago) that this type of merger would "never happen."

Among the many bureucratic impediments (incorporation in two different countries, separate bliateral agreements, etc.) was the fact that KL had brand equity that AF wasn't keen to toss out.

Perhaps being in business under its original name longer than any other carrier does give KL a certain je ne sais quoi - or the Dutch equivalent.

This is a very important aspect as well. Until there is a real single European sky, and the EU has landing rights agreements on behalf of its member states with all other countries, you do not want to lose existing agreements.

GenevaFlyer

Virgin America is too small to count in the domestic market and is also at T4 at JFK and is losing money.

Virgin America however has most of its routes out of the California market and is an important airline and Delta's partnership would strongly diminish competition in the marketplace

With Virgin Atlantic, the Delta and Virgin Partnership makes sense because Delta and Virgin cam combine slots that Delta and Virgin couldn't get otherwise.

But Virgin America AND Delta would be anti competitive in the marketplace knocking out an important carrier.

Virgin America has potential with Frontier Airlines, which likely or has already begun to be spun off from Republic Airways.

I would say a Virgin America and Frontier Airlines combination make sense considering Frontier is based out of Denver which is a very important travel market that Virgin America is missing.

"Frontier will not complete the separation from Republic until early the first half of 2013.[24]"

Delta won't get the Virgin America part. They don't need it and already serve those routes on their own.

Denver would be an important hub for Virgin America and the two airlines would mean improved marketshare.

To steer this thread back on topic, the Sunday Times out of the U.K. is explicitly reporting this morning that Branson is prepared to sell some shares and give up controlling interest in Virgin Atlantic...

By way of Bloomberg: http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...-times-reports

And the Sunday Times article itself has an interesting summary, pre-paywall: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/...cle1172853.ece

It's probably worth mentioning that Delta's investors day is Wednesday, which would be a good opportunity to roll this out.

I have 55K VS. Since VS does not fly out of my home airport, I was going to convert them to 110K HH.

It looks like maybe I should hold tight for now, since they may soon have a use on DL or their partners. Correct?

More on this today:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8B906S20121210

Good luck using them on DL. You need it.