It is possible the economics are changing?

Richard Anderson definitely does not call McKinsey and Co. to get ideas on how to run an airline. He is a vertical integration, process driven, results guy and to my amazement, he and his team have executed.

I am not sure I understand the benefit of a captive "farm team" regional airline. You and I have never seen "free agency" benefit the player in the aviation industry. Could management be that fearful of a pilot shortage? I doubt it.

Black helicopter stuff .... (don't read if you don't like spy novels)

The Delta MEC, traditionally, has fought unity at the regional level.

Notice that in the Pinnacle deal ALPA specifically and intentionally excluded the Delta MEC and thanks to the incredible power President Moak enjoys, Moak and Wychor did it without a peep of complaint.

Moak tends to do things in such a way that they are done before the membership even gets a whiff of what happened. Could Moak be engineering restoration of job protection provisions? Who knows?

Doing so would go against the action he took with Compass as MEC Chairman, but economics do change and so does airline management.

Perhaps there is a good reason the Delta pilots are locked out of whatever is getting cooked up back there.