Originally Posted by JungleBus

While we all await the T/A, here's a little more "dot connecting" from a lowly regional puke (albeit one next in line to become a Deltoid [cpz flow], and thus with more than a passing interest in this contract):

If, as gloopy and others have conjectured, this T/A allows extra 76 seaters in exchange for parking a greater number of 50 seaters, it's important that everyone see in real terms what they're voting for or against. You won't be simply voting to decrease or increase DCI airframes. Neither will you be voting to decrease or increase DCI ASMs. This will be nothing less than a choice between the destruction of the two-tier outsourcing system that has developed over the last 20 years, and its preservation.

Here's why. For the first time in a very long time, the status quo is in your guys favor. The Pinnacle bankruptcy demonstrates why. The 50 seaters, marginally profitable in the best of times, have become a huge albatross around management's neck. They're inefficient, and oil costs have gone up. The need for 50 seat feed has become increasingly superfluous in the face of consolidation. Regional labor costs, long held down by continuous expansion and high turnover, have skyrocketed. In the case of Pinnacle, long one of the cheapest regionals out there and thus a big beneficiary of additional outsourcing over the last 10 years, the costs increased so much that Delta was unwilling to pay anything extra for Pinnacle to cover them, even though it drove Pinnacle into bankruptcy. You know what this means? It means outsourcing is no longer profitable to management, even with the advantages of whipsaw. As management cuts its losses, the factors that drove it to do so will only accelerate (ie regional 51-76 seat costs will go up as they shed 50 seaters)...we may very well be seeing the destruction of the outsourcing system.

Why ALPA would want to halt this positive trend, I cannot fathom; I do know some of you have your own theories. But if this T/A contains the scope relief many of us think it will, it represents nothing less than a dramatic intervention on management's behalf to preserve the two-tier system as-is. The only way DAL can make outsourcing profitable again is to replace inefficient aircraft with very efficient aircraft, and do so at young or new carriers, or those fresh from BK court with costs reset. Why would any pilot want that? Just when growing mainline is finally becoming advantageous, you'd be making yourselves management's choice of last resort once again!

Any other gains in a T/A that contains such scope relief would constitute nothing more than 30 pieces of silver to buy your acquiescence to the continuing destruction of your profession and the betrayal of the next generation of airline pilots. That's the way I see it, anyways. I sincerely hope this T/A doesn't force you to make that choice. Carry on....