Hey Oberon, I thought for sure I had your phone number and was going to give you a call. Guess I don't, so we can do this here. You're a good guy if a bit trusting of ALPA - but then again, so was I a week ago. Here we go...

1. Using EASKs for the production of balance at least guaranteed that roughly 50% of JV passengers went across the pond on Delta metal. As I'm sure you're well aware, that language most recently had 1.5% wiggle room with a 3-year lookback and a 1-year cure, and Delta was never in compliance that entire time (I believe they ended with ~47.5% of the EASKs). Because we operate smaller-gauge equipment than AF/KLM, 50% EASKs amounted to something like 54% of the block hours and even Delta's non-compliant state left us with 51% of the block hours. Now we go to 50% which puts Delta back in compliance with another 1% of wiggle room. Going down to the minimum would take us down to about 46% of the JV passenger traveling on Delta metal - for now. Delta could further downgauge and it would have no effect on block hour ratio; Air France could add an A380 CDG-JFK and Delta could just add a 737-900ER BOS-AMS and it would all be perfectly compliant. Currently, Delta downgauging means they'd have to add more flights to make up for it (or AF/KL/AZ has to draw down capacity); and Air France adding an A380 means we add 2 A330s or 3 757s . Some ALPA-friendly posters here have claimed block hours have more downside protection, using the example that if AF parks a A380, we have to park 2 A330s - but there's nothing in the language that actually requires that, and in any case DL has never been anywhere close to the 50% so it's a moot point.

2. Someone took the ATL 88 wide report from a couple months ago and cross-referenced it to the LCAs. It's improbable that every LCA was giving OE on every trip, but we know they've been busy in that category, and we know they'll stay as busy or busier going forward. It amounted to something like 10.7% of the trips removed....and 90% of the LCA lines had weekends off! Obviously that won't be true in every category, but it's clearly a pretty major concession for junior FOs that take the seniority hit, senior FOs that lose out on GS opportunities, and junior CAs that suddenly find themselves sliding backwards as senior FOs upgrade to make up the lost money!

3. The company needed a few things, which was the only reason we opened early. I believe they will still need those things, and more urgently going forward, but will be unwilling to come back to the table immediately lest we demonstrate the benefits of unionism to the other employees. So we'll forego our 8% raise on 7/1, forego the 6% raise in 2016 but also keep about that much profit sharing we would have given up, keep LCA trips, keep current sick leave, keep current JV balance (and keep grieving it if the company continues to be out of compliance), etc. Eventually the company will come back and up the ante or make the concessions a bit less onerous (there were frankly far better ways to address their issues - we gave them a sledgehammer for issues that required a tackhammer). I don't think they'll park us in negotiations hell the entire time - but if they do, we're not in that bad of a spot to wait, while they kinda are.