Originally Posted by
acl65pilot
Like I said, this was the easy way, but they could have done it with out these provisions as well. They would have just restructured the corporation or waited on the final financial transaction until they could have gotten SOC. The way they did it, and we allowed it was the easiest, but there were other avenues available if we wanted to play hard ball.
Also, if you forget, you were granted about 3,500 shares, and taken off of the pay raise metric that could have been reset depending on profitability. Go look at the contract comparison. The way we were paid when you were hired, and how those raises were not just applied, but the determination of if they stuck, sucked. Getting rid of that was huge.
Simply put, we and the company took the easier softer way. I wanted more too, but the reality is we were less than 12 months from exiting CH11. Fact.
I guess do as SWA is doing with FL?
The result could have easily been a UsAir America West debacle. I think that was our leverage and I thought the whole point of allowing the pilots to see if they could work out something amicable and when DALS said no DAL temporarily "walked" away from the merger. We had a lot of leverage.
However, most of it was diluted because even when I was hired we openly talked about being furloughed. The signs in the economy that things were going to come crashing down were there not to mention oil prices were going to $150bb back then.
I'd say there was incredible leverage but it would've been a dangerous hand to play given the times. But it could have been played and there wouldn't have been shares given out to ease over the change to begin with.