To follow up my own post. Historians are no where near finished digging into what transpired with the Pinnacle Bridge Agreement. Insiders on this board have stated D-ALPA did finally review the fee for departure arrangements with DCI carriers. The timing suggests this review was tied to C2012 and probably the Pinnacle Bridge Agreement. A key component seems to be the provisions which drive a matching of the lowest tier cost structure, which is represented by the lowest two vendors in the F4D arrangements. It is likely these agreements were reviewed to leverage their use.

There are many holes in the Pinnacle story. What makes sense is that negotiators used concessions at Pinnacle, just as they used cuts to profit sharing across all employee groups, to bolster pay rates in Contract 2012.

I do believe that if any of us, including those who want the DPA, got a peek behind the curtain there would be a certain "Ah HA!" moment as the light went on and we realized the kind of sausage making that results in a successful contract. There is probably some stuff no one wants to politically acknowledge and some good reasons why the Reps are OK with the negotiators going slightly outside the limits of their authority and our MEC is OK with national not abiding the Constitution, Bylaws and Admin Manual. Big picture view is at the end of the day the result benefitted the Delta pilots.
Carl,

A question of fact remains on your statement. We know that Section 40 of our Admin Manual was not followed by the Pinnacle MEC.

It really does not matter if President Moak called some friend, or random member of the MEC, to tell them what was going on behind the scenes. The operative fact is that the Pinnacle MEC did not follow the protocols which are in Section 40 of the Admin Manual, which was a part of ALPA's voluntary settlement of a Class Action brought by aggrieved express pilots.

We do know that when various MEC members at our airline and other airlines questioned the apparent failure to follow guidance ALPA's Representation Department vigorously worked to quash any formal investigation and hearing which might have led to an Executive Board meeting to take official action on behalf of ALPA's membership.

FWIW, President Moak stated he did advise our MEC. Our MEC is on record stating that he did not. I say it does not matter either way because:

• Even if President Moak did communicate the goings on with Pinnacle, the relevant parts of our Constitution and Admin Manual were sidestepped and ignored. As a result, none of those processes took place. This is justified by stating Pinnacle would have been dissolved by management.
• Once a contract is ratified, there are very few practical, operable solutions.

Thus, I believe the timing of the Pinnacle Bridge Agreement was specifically designed to coincide with the waning days of the prior Delta MEC Administration, Delta's needs for fleet renewal, and of course the Holidays.

The question that matters to most is "was the result good for Delta pilots?" Given what we know of the DPA's positions, the DPA would have approved. The difference is, by leveraging the unwitting Pinnacle pilots (and express pilots across the board), the Delta pilots got more than they ever could have gotten under the DPA's projected scheme.