Good points over all. But its critical to acknowledge in that particular instance the incredible arrogance of the ASA/CMR leaderships. While they feigned innocence about "the integrity of the process" that very thing was their thinly veiled cover to "go for it" with a blatant seniority grab. Once green lighted, a staple would have been the floor, so why not take a chance at more? That is one reason why it was so vehemently (and justifiably) opposed.

There can never, ever, be any step toward "unity" with regional airlines that give even a theoretical chance at arbitration or anything greater than a staple. Ironically, under almost every scenario, even a pre-agreed upon staple gives them that chance because once you're in you're in and can then sue for more.

The solution needs to be 100% from the mainline side to recapture at the bottom end at this point. Even PCL wend behind our backs and negotiated directly with DL management for DAL scope and hiring preferences up to and including top secret "vault letters" and that can not be rewarded or treated as leverage. We need to reduce large RJ's at regionals bring that lift here unilaterally at this point. We have already given a lot to DCI that has no leverage and is imploding as it is. I'm in favor of hiring an equivalent number of pilots to the large RJ's we re-insource, but we're basically doing that anyway.