Carried over from another thread because it seems more relevant here ....

The Company is rumored to have approached ALPA for a significant scope concession to allow many more 76 seat jets. My posts have been aimed at educating mainline pilots why they might want to look past the 717 and understand the numbers which make airplanes like the CRj905 more desired by management and more operationally flexible. Thus, if we had to play this game defensively; we would rather have the 905's than the 717's; they make more money.

As things stand at the end of 2011, beginning of 2012, mainline has 718 airplanes. At 767 mainline jets the three to one language is triggered. 153 76 seat jets are currently authorized and management has bought every single one they were allowed to buy ... now they want more. It would take a mainline fleet growing by 49 jets to make that happen.

However, then management runs into the 255 total limit on 70/76 seat jets. As you can guess, they've maxed that limit out also.

My guess is that Management wants concessions on one of those two limits with the promise that "if we ever pull down the mainline fleet, we will pull down DCI in a proportionate fashion." We've seen that before and it failed to protect jobs in Contract 2000 because the minute things got tough the Company said "we really need these bigger RJ's to make money and stay in business" so we removed those scope protections and furloughed mainline pilots. Some, ironically, found employment on the same jets ALPA outsourced, at one fifth the pay that they were making at Delta.

Strategically, it would be smarter for Delta pilots to want the real action, the 905's, where Delta's 10K reports say the profits are. That's the more secure position and instead of looking for cheap and used, Delta management is obtaining the best and new for their "regional" operations, again.

The task of our Negotiating Committee is to get Delta pilots in those seats, performing Delta flying. Delta can buy more RJ's if it wants WITHOUT SCOPE CHANGES and fly them with mainline pilots. We should all support and encourage our Reps, Admin and Negotiators to hold the high ground against outsourcing our jobs.