Well, we tried. But it was never presented to the membership as, "Hey, let's sell 50% of our narrow body flying for a 5% pay raise!" That never would have gone over.

What was happening in 1993 was, Mo'Ron Allen was saying things like, "You give me a 5% pay cut, or I'll sell all the 737's..." And he was furloughing pilots left and right, and he'd just gotten rid of all the DC9's, so yeah, we believed he would do it. He really was that stupid.

Instead, in 1996, he put all the 737-200's into a new B scale, called Delta Express, where the Capt. would make $100/hr. (down from about $148/hr) with a two year freeze, where all the other seats only had a 12mo. freeze and paid a whole lot more.

We should have brought all the ASA and Com Air guys onto our list the minute Delta bough them, and controlled 100% of our flying, all the way down to the 36 seat RJ, and nipped the whipsawing in the bud.

But hindsight is always 20/20. I just hope the clowns at National have learned a lesson, but after seeing what they just did to Pinacle, it don't look good.