Delta and Air Canada CEOs Talk to the Crowd at NBTA

(MoneyWatch)  Yesterday morning, NBTA hosted its Airline CEO Roundtable here in Los Angeles. It was supposed to feature one CEO from each major alliance: Air Canada's Montie Brewer, Delta's Richard Anderson, and British Airways' Willie Walsh. Unfortunately, Walsh didn't make it, probably due to the hot merger talks between BA and Iberia, but the other two did a nice job of answering questions and talking shop.

It was an interesting set up. Peter Greenberg was the loquacious moderator. Richard Anderson launched jokes every chance he could while Montie Brewer played the role of the straight man. A lot of the discussion was the same old rehashed stuff, but there were some gems in there.

It was no surprise that Richard kept focusing on how the government is responsible for all our woes. I think he's a bit too quick to pass off responsibility, but clearly the government does need to get behind the reform of the air traffic control system sooner rather than later. I'm not quite sure what Richard meant when he said that "The physical capacity of the runway is determined by the local and enroute airspace." That might be a contributing factor, but without more concrete for planes to take off and land on, that's not going to fix everything.

Richard was relentless. He said that while the government has promised 70 to 80 initiatives to reduce New York congestion, only 17 have been completed. He wants to see a complete redesign of the airspace, and once again, he blamed government for all our woes.

Montie was asked if he were granted antitrust immunity with all the other airlines, what would be the first thing he would talk about. That's not exactly a question anyone is going to answer straight up, but he pretty much echoed Richard by saying "the issue we all have is congestion." He didn't seem nearly as hell-bent on blaming the government though.

The Q&A session had an interesting mix. One person praised Richard and wished him luck in the merger while another scolded him for nickel-and-diming. I found the question about charging for the first bag quite amusing since neither Air Canada nor Delta charge for that (though Delta did just announce the 2nd bag fee is doubling). There was also a heated exchange from corporate travel managers asking why they can't change names on their tickets. That turned into a shouting match, and then it was over. Interesting stuff, indeed.