Delta pilots perform all Delta flying, represented by our Bargaining Agent. For an opener, Southwest's scope section looks good.

How we get there is up to all of us and people smarter than me. It would be good if our pilot group could understand what real unity is and why it is important for our growth, bargaining leverage, promotional opportunities, and job protection.

I come back to the ASA example because it historically demonstrates the failure of the DPA's "conflict of interest" logic. The example illustrates ALPA national's conduct to defend the rights of Delta pilots to bargain exclusively.

Tim Caplinger was part of the Administration that outsourced "our" flying. If anything, he's taken the old guard's justifications for outsourcing (not our fault, the RJ guys made us do it) and magnified them into this "conflict of interest" reason for dumping ALPA.

I post the history of our scope negotiations in the hope people will understand how we got here and why the old solutions will not work.

The solution to our scope problems will begin when we decide that we put a priority on Delta pilots performing Delta flying. We need to understand why this is important, beyond the personal implications for pay and promotion. Pilots need to understand why unity is critical to our profession.

Many here say, "mergers are management's choice." I'd agree as long as we held management's feet to the fire and said "no more outsourcing" and they either had to grow organically, or merge.

Obviously our Corporation and (to a much lesser extent) we benefit from code share / JV. ALPA's got some good folks on those issues and I'm not saying I know better than they do. What I do know is that we need to approach this issue from the perspective of unity.