gloopy

Yes, but an important thing to acknowledge about that deal is AA is an independant union. That alone eliminated any and all DFR claims, which is one of, if not the, biggest risks to our pilot group in a convoluted financial smoke screen such as this potential theory.

Also, since pretty much everyone flies for everyone these days in the ACMI "air group" sector, how would a staple work for the SKYW "air group"? What if they merge with ASA/XJ (and 100% they will if they see those pilots getting a sweet deal) how do we "flow" UALexpress, USAirexpress, Eagle, etc pilots back and forth?

Would it be like a Mesa/RAh style "master list" monstrosity where pilots bid constantly among half a dozen fake airline certificates? Many of which have nothing in whole or in part to do with Delta? In good times and in bad, that has constant DFR written all over it.

While many (arguably most?) regional airline pilots at virtual fake airlines may indeed realize their bubble is bursting to the point of complete sector collapse (although not all do FWIW) they still have all the incentive in the world to go for a land grab at anytime in this process. Including and especially after the ink is dry on our little Rumpelstiltskin-ish deal with a Lorenzo-esque pretend airline experiment.

This is what many have been waiting for. Take the runway, reach V1, and then figure out how to sort it all out. Even though the deals are signed, it will be a guarantee of DFR's for the career of the youngest pilot on our list. Either way financial resources will be diverted to pay for the squabble, and worst case we could lose. You know they will claim that while their represenatives agreed to it and maybe it even passed MEMRAT, maybe even by large margins, that they only did so under duress, and they will illustrate the "harm" they recieved in staggering dollar terms. Just look at TWA to see how easily they can sue after the fact. And they will if we are ALPA, 100%. One hundred percent.

And they won't just be suing for our dues money or the mothership's MCF. No, they will be suing for our seniority numbers too.

And my appologies to the dead horse in all this, but I still don't see why its such a given that a fake airline gets better terms than a real airline espcially when the ONLY thing they can back up their financing with in the first place is the real airline's overall credit risk. SKYW only gets planes at a good rate to fly for Delta if they can prove to their lines of credit that they will be flying them in iron clad long term agreements with Delta Air Lines and therefore the financiers must be assured that Delta Air Lines is a good enough credit risk relative for the spposedly preferential credit terms of SKYW to begin with.

Have we avoided debt with our RJ partner catastrophy? I guess we have, on paper, and only on a technicality. But the costs associated with separate ops and ACMI guaranteed profits plus the devistating lack of flexibility in those long term deals with the devil that we sign just for quarterly bonus time today have cost us billions.

I just can't wrap my head around why we would ever go along with this. If the company needs the planes for the network, we will get the planes. We are an airline. That isn't just their operation job, its pretty much their only one. If we don't sign off on a convoluted monstrosity like this and we still need the planes, they will have to deal with us to put them on our certificate in our PWA on our (and only our) seniority list. We can't say we refuse to do a B scale when we would otherwise go along with a B scale on another certificate. That is moral grandstanding and no one buys it anymore.