Northwest Airlines: More Capacity Cuts?

I'm always amazed at how reporters, enslaved as so many of them are to the dubious virtues of ready corporate access, believe the story is the fortunes of the airlines -- and not the dire prospects current airline tactics portend for a vital part of our national transportation system: air travel.

Airlines are engaged in a long-term strategy to shrink the domestic air-transport system and keep it shrunken. Now, even with oil prices about half of what they were a year ago, the process continues.

Northwest is the latest to send a clear signal of its "flexibility" in the area of reducing service even beyond what's been announced. This is presented as a means to "soften the blow through downsizing."

My question: Soften the blow for whom?

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