Perhaps well said, but not correct.

This gets into a game of who said what. During the PID Bob Arnold (the ASA MEC Chair) briefed in both Dallas and Atlanta what status quo was. By paycheck or equipment we were talking staple. The huge advantage if it happened was a job at Delta and avoiding whipsaw and outsourcing. As for pilots going to Delta, I made no secret of my hopes for a Delta job and never heard anything like what you state.

The ASA and Comair guys were following a process like a sequential checklist. ALPA policy is that a PID for a merger must happen before each side takes positions on SLI. Therefore there was no position on SLI. They had not gotten to step 1, so why jump to step 4 or 5? Especially knowing that failure to adhere to policy would have both given ALPA National the excuse they needed to deny the PID, as well as incite a riot on the Delta property.

I promoted the idea of publishing "we'd be grateful for a staple." The reason my request was shunted was that we had no PID yet and (to reiterate the above) we were following a process. To start the SLI talk was inappropriate before the PID was granted.

The Q&A you reference does not exist. Like the stories about MEC positions on SLI. They never got that far. One of the other Delta pilots said he heard Bob Arnold take a SLI position in a meeting with Delta. I wasn't there and did not hear that. His report sounded credible, but it sounded like MEC Chair bluster which everyone had plenty of back then.

As for the RJDC, they were separate from the Bob Arnold MEC. But they held similar views on whipsaw, outsourcing and the likely staple. Later, Dan Ford and the Comair MEC Chairman had wildly different views and frankly, Dan Ford thought the Comair MEC Chair was an idiot.

As you know the ASA MEC split from him also. While Comair's MEC was hoping to leverage Delta furloughees, ASA welcomed them and were very happy to have the excellent guys that came over. The Comair MEC also printed up stickers avowing their support for the ASA pilots in our Section 6 while simultaneously trying to cut a concessionary deal with Delta to take ASA's jets.

That does not account for crew room blow hards (every airline has them) or Chief pilots. When ASA was acquired it was looking at 737's and Comair was in the process of a DC-9 acquisition. The management types were aware and talked a lot about it. But, they were not ALPA Reps and mostly not even ALPA members. To be fair, I think you have to take the official statements from the official reps and not let crew room rumors speak for the group.

Current negotiations (which have not begun yet) are another topic entirely, but the Delta MEC is encouraged to restore scope. Thus far there has been no effort at scope restoration which would allow us to see our Bylaws in action.