Originally Posted by
sailingfun
DALPA was willing to attempt to get management to merge the airlines. I don't think they would have had any success in that. They tried to work a prenup. I was at one of the meetings. Comairs position was no prenup. The made it 100% clear they would only accept ALPA merger policy and would push for DOH in arbitration.
It was a classic case of pigs get feed and hogs get slaughtered.
Regardless as you mention and I agree Delta management was not going to merge the airlines so even had a prenup been reached nothing would have changed.
I was on the ASA MEC in that time frame, and I attended ALL of the meetings (not just one). I can testify that there WAS a prenup, between ASA and CMR and the two MECs even had a handshake agreement to merge seniority on straight DOH as our seniority lists almost matched exactly. The only part you have correct is that staple wasn't and never should have been an option. The goal was, as you said, to invoke ALPA merger policy. That could have been a seniority rig, or any other negotiated/arbitrated list. The handful calling for straight DOH between CMR/ASA and DAL were a vast and vocal minority. Nobody in a serious decision making position thought a 20 year RJ captain was going to fly a DAL 767.
But because of the rumors, misinformation, and biases passed around that the RJ pukes were trying to "steal' DAL seniority, DALPA vowed to kill it, and since they had DAL management by the balls, DAL never pushed it. DALPA was then and still is adamant that no regional pilot will ever get a spot on "their" seniority list with out being "properly vetted" by their exhaustive interview process (which DAL doesn't even use any more). Which really shot themselves in the foot, because the "RJ problem' could have been solved 10 years ago, putting them in a massive competitive position in every way.