It was termed "joint venture flying." there was an international dynamic to it, but the net effect would have been tremendous. Here's the deal. CAL took a look at the UAL book language after the bankruptcy and said, "we can one up them." The actual intent of the JV flying LOA was to increase flying at COEX, which has the net effect of lowering the cost of a pilot on domestic legs, and then couple that with some enhanced "code sharing" ala Aer Lingus style and you can see what that does to the effect of the price of a pilot on trans-atlantic routes.

The company was going to both lower the prices per ASM on domestic long haul routes and then simultaneously do it on international transatlantic routes. They were going to give all current pilots a 2 percent pay raise in exchange for relief on the absolute tightest scope language on the planet.

Per contract 02 CAL had over 6,000 pilots. Post contract '02 cal went down to 4400 due to the PBS implementation LOA. This is a fact. Then, 147 got furloughed. This was done to get the attention of the CAL MEC and to get them to the table.

Ask yourself these questions:

who authorized the CAL Negotating committee to discuss this or negotiate it? answer: no one. It was done in secret.

Ask this: why would the system staffing committee chairman Dave Zullo negoate this without anyones permission or authorization?

This was so weird on so many levels....... This was done this way because CAL knew the MEC would say no. This was done this way to bypass the MEC and allow the company to negotiate directly with the pilots. The company let it slip in a check airman meeting the details and decided to bypass the process once the MEC voted against it.

How many LOA's you ever seen whereby the MEC wasn't allowed to show it to the pilots or discuss it in an open meeting?

The real reason for the merger was likely the failure of CAL management to break the scope clause. The company was going to re-hire the 147 in exchange for a no furlough clause for the 147, but there would have never been any growth. JV flying to other "outsourced" carriers would have covered that. and so, there would have been no career progression. You'd be a 58 year old co pilot with First Officer menopause. by then you wouldn't have care if you got laid or got an upgrade. You'd have been happy to have a bowel movement and the occasional stiff erection.

The eventual net effect would have been this: we would have been negotiating against ourselves. Lowering the price of labor domestically and internationally. The next contract would have been status quo.