True. He also hinted that larger RJ's were on the table as well, like the 90 seaters flying around with 76 seats in a 2 class management preferred config that eventually hapened anyway.

Comair management had a long standing policy that they didn't always enforce that required seniority resignation. Ironically it is the exact same policy DL itself had and still does.

ASA management had no such policy.

DL went to the ASA and Comair MEC's, both of which were in on the PID and passively agressively supporting the RJDC by the way, and told them to ask their managements to hire without seniority resignation or they would be punished. The ASA MEC said "yeah sure whatever dood its already existing policy so whatever" and the CMR MEC puffed up their chests and acted like they had leverage they never did. Plenty of arrogance to go around.

Then when the dust settled, the ASA pilot group was acting like they stepped up and helped brothers in need with a valliant effort when they in fact actively did nothing (as a group) and the DL MEC had the scapegoat they needed to distract their membership from the catestrophic scope failures C2K allowed as DCI went on a multi thousand pilot hiring fest in addition to putting the DL mainline seniority resignation policy itself that was actually harming the furloughed pilots behind the political smokescreen they needed so it didn't have to be directly addressed.

Meanwhile plenty of furloughed AA and UAL (among many, many others) went on to get temp work at ASA and Comair because their airlines refused to recognize their fake resignation letters as everyone knew they were written under duress anyway. Only DL management vowed to honor such letters, the same that Comair required and that the DL MEC refused to worry about getting changed.

Not to mention DL owned both and could have very easily forced both to hire as many pilots as DL demanded without seniority resignation. It was a Delta problem with a Delta solution that the outsourcing happy Delta MEC didn't want to spend one more second on then they had to. When they saw a political move to blame it on a regional group they jumped all over it, while continuing to defend the thousands of new DCI pilots the scope failures they endorsed directly caused even as they defended said scope failures by having the audacity to say RJ's were saving their bacon and were it not for the outsourcing there would be even more furloughs so the furloughed pilots should be thanking them.

The end result drove a bigger wedge between DL and ASA/CMR pilots as well as well as between the ASA and CMR pilots during a time when predatory bargaining ("deal me an ace") was really starting to spool up in the regional sector. Suddenly "pay for training" was perfectly acceptable as well as GoJet and any other cut throat pay for jet time ambitions by any and every pilot group imaginable and the race to the bottom was 90 degrees nose down in full afterburner.