Originally Posted by
Scoop
Sailing,
I will jump in. Regardless of what you think of Bars post overall, he is spot on with the following statement:
"One result of not merging ASA & Comair was Delta pilots being furloughed while the regionals hired rapidly to replace them.
Even you must admit, that is CLEAR evidence of a scope failure when one division of Delta flushes and hires those furloughed pilots to replace themselves at much lower wages. That is what happens when union leadership decides against unity."
Our Scope allowed DAL to replace over 1000 Pilots after 911. At the same time our passengers were still flying to the same cities on DAL tickets - its just that DAL Pilots were not flying them.
Scoop
That is not a true statement at all. That is speculation. Even if DAL had merged with ASA and CMR there was no requirement to have all DCI flying flown by DAL/ASA/CMR, the growth could have gone to the other DCI carriers, as it did in some circumstances, and DAL still would have retired all the MD-11s, L1011s, 727s, 737,300s and 737-200s, which would have most likely resulted in furloughs.
Let's be honest, DAL bought ASA/CMR for the cheaper labor. Merging ASA/CMR with DAL defeats that purpose. If they wanted DAL pilots to fly 50/70 seat RJs they didn't need to buy ASA/CMR or outsource to the DCI portfolio, they could have just bought the aircraft and put them on the DAL certificate.
It's all about cheap labor, look at what's happening at CMR today, that's what would have happened earlier rather than later had we merged.
The solution was not to merge with ASA/CMR, it was to capture the flying, barring that, to have adequate flow through protections to every carrier that signs a contract at DCI. JMHO.