Originally Posted by Mesabah

Regional carriers were once stand alone air lines, that code shared with larger ones. For Delta pilots, the ONLY option to preserve scope was to force a merger. However, that still does not protect you from further code share. So, because Comair/ASA were ALPA, the merger would have been ALPA merger policy. In other words, Delta pilots would have gotten all the regional pilots, in perhaps a DOH SLI, with no guarantee the planes would be sticking around, and not pushed off to another codeshare.

So the choice was, permit branded regional flying in exchange for code share restrictions, or vacate their seat for a regional pilot.

In hindsight, the Delta pilots should have removed ALPA, and gone their own way. This would have prevented half of the bad stuff that happened to them in the following years.