My advice to ACL, which he disagrees with, is to candidly state the Company is acting in bad faith and is not compliant with the agreement they made. The Company has blown us off and decided to, again, negotiate out of a scope violation, just as they have before.
The obvious question; is we do not enforce the spirit of this JV, will we enforce any scope provision?
This may not be a fair question yet, but it will be timely next spring.
In the mean time numerous questions are being answered about Delta's long term plans. I see a virtual repeat of CapEx coming to acquire "scope busting" airplanes by non seniority list carriers coincidentally when our 717 ' s come up for renewal. I see Delta money will probably be used to help re fleet Virgin and other equity partners. It gets back to the central question, do we continue to liquidate scope as Delta continues to diversify away from Delta pilots?
Our MEC has these same questions and concerns. We have many good advocates, like ACL, working for us. We need them.
Again, we need to be very thoughtful in how we direct their actions.
ACL was strongly against the three year JV window and one year cure. He is correct the MEC can not do anything now. But from my view he is safe saying what the rest of us are thinking and nobody likes the Company's non compliance with our agreement. But then again, what if the Company hits the reset percentage and this was all about nothing? In that case ACL (and others) are being very smart to keep their powder dry and save fire for a smaller measurement period.
He is a smart guy.