Carl, would you characterize the NWA merger as the back door?

As a union member and proponent for a more aggressive representational entity can you clearly delineate which pilots we might merge with that you feel deserve a merger? Would you wait for management to tell you who THEY wanted, or would your union represent pilots? What if management decided they wanted to flush your senior keester to the street while keeping us junior (cheaper) guys? How would you feel about starting over at age ... ?

Do you think your airline hiring replacement pilots at the "regional" while simultaneously furloughing mainline pilots is acceptable?

Do you consider yourself a bigot?

Carl, I like you, but you are a representational bigot. You believe some pilots deserve representation while others do not. You base this on your prejudice, with your guess as to every regional pilot having applied for a major job and having been turned down. Apparently you have forgotten:

• Since we outsourced half our flying, there are not as many "major" jobs
• The "majors" have shrunk to the point what we used to call regionals are now majors. We are considered a "Legacy" carrier
• As the regionals became majors (including Southwest and Republic) their pay and working conditions have improved to the point for many people there is no financial pay back for having to start over ... (for instance, as your contract and equipment stood in 2007, the numbers said there was scant difference between NWA and staying put at my regional)
• Age 65 resulted in tremendous stagnation, we've only hired around 1,000 pilots in the last decade. (our decision to kick Compass out was nearly 50% of Delta hiring in the last ten years!)

The result of bigotry is clear. Delta pilots get furloughed while replacement pilots get hired.

The answer is also clear. We need to stop outsourcing by either cutting the contracts, not renewing them, or making them all Delta pilots. The most economically viable plan (and thus the most likely to succeed) is in our merger and fragmentation policies. We could have simply flushed the NWA pilots (as your Reps accused us of trying to do). Aren't you glad your union provided you the same representation it did Delta pilots?