In 1999 ASA & Comair were DCI (apart from a very small SkyWest & Trans States presence). The entire argument for the merger was closing the hole in scope and just like we saw in 2008 management wanted to acquire these carriers and at that moment pilot pay wasn't the issue. Delta bought ASA to get its gates in Atlanta, prevent a competitor from forming and mostly to clean up the mess that resulted from ASA's Section 6 fight with founders George and John.

ASA already had it's initial RJ order in, which would have provided jobs for about another 700 pilots. Delta later increased this order to over 500 jets and took every one of them.

Since you complained about the speculative nature of the posts, I conceded and gave up on what is a speculative argument which does not matter now. But maybe that was an error. The real lynch pin was the change in ALPA's governance to facilitate the operation of alter ego replacement airline operations.

At the behest of the mainline members of our union, operational integration triggers were removed from ALPA's merger policy. The point being that ALPA's policy now formally accepted alter ego outsourcing of work with an airline's brand.(*)

Management has always wanted to replace us with lower paid pilots and diminish our power. The big change with the ASA PID was ALPA's change from seeing alter ego as our mortal enemy to seeing outsourcing as a partnership with management.

Today the biggest threat to our union is the outsourcing that was the result of the policy changes leading up to the denial of the ASA PID. That's arcane, but since others seem interested it is something worth discussing.

----

(*) Addendum: I do not have the research at hand to prove this point, but around this time is the first we see mainline MEC's monetizing scope and using scope in bargaining. First at US Air, United and then Delta's contract 2000. This makes logical sense since ALPA would have had a conflict with its own alter ego policy prior to the changes in the Constitution and Bylaws. Of course we know the result of monetizing and trading scope. It has been argued here sufficiently to show junior members' jobs effectively were sold in exchange for bargaining credits.

My point is, the selling out of your own Council membership began with the selling out of the regional guys. Once unity was "for sale" it changed everything.