No that's a non issue. Their contracts automatically renew at the 5 year mark for another 5 years and can only be ended for the same reasons you could terminate for cause, so that's not a way around it. But fragmentation is and would have to be used to some degree to avoid the DL seniority list from being absolutely gutted in what would otherwise become one of the worst windfalls in airline history, followed immediately by massive capacity pulldowns to the combined list to the great detriment of the PM-DL pilot group. We need to pull out all the stops to prevent something like that from happening.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that RA and the DL BOD are fiscally capabile of offering us that would justify paving the way for an outright JB merger in its entirety. If that's what they have in mind with "certain opportunities" then we need to milk the RLA for all the years we can get out of it even at current book and give them a USAir style merger.