Originally Posted by
Molon Labe
It's the reason behind why there is a lack of widebody aircraft...That reason is that via codesharing Delta management is already using the merchant marine model against us. The JV with China Eastern is a great example out of many...Look at the main deck cargo, 14 NWA freighters worth of main deck Cargo go through Anchorage every day filled with NWA/Delta Cargo...The list goes on and on. The next step in flag of convenience granted is NAI, but the model has already hit us hard.
Your conclusion is not totally wrong, but your presentation could be improved. Please do not confuse codesharing and Joint Ventures.
Codesharing is paying someone else to carry your passengers. GOL is an example of a codeshare which benefits us as we carry something in the neighborhood of 10 times as many of their passengers on Delta jets than they carry of ours.
Economically a Joint Venture is a merger. The critical difference is commingling the money in a secret commercial agreement and then hiding the result somewhere in consolidated results.
You are correct that a JV has a very high risk of labor arbitrage. Northwest invented this sort of arrangement in 1993 with KLM and was the first to experience a withdrawal from secondary markets and focus on larger widebodies to serve it's partner's hub cities.
Delta had (and has) taken a different approach and had (has) a different, small gauged, widebody fleet to serve it's smaller destinations.
The key to enjoying industry leading pay and working conditions while avoiding Delta's use of partners' certificates to reduce pilot costs is effective scope language.
As pilots, we need to push for changes which will optimize the Delta-ALPA's enforcement of scope.