Originally Posted by
sailingfun
That was hard to read but your history is a bit off. 35 years ago not 60 there were very few scope limits in contracts. That is how Delta in the early nineties could threaten to transfer all aircraft smaller than 757’s to the regionals and actually operate 4 engine DC9 sized jets at ASA. I keep reading in forums how we once had scope restricting virtually all flying to the mainline. That was not the case and actually the majors had no scope. Scope came about after deregulation and the subsequent cheaper is better airline mentality. The average number of seats from the bottom to the top of the industry has also soared.
Bull****
You write "very few scope limits in contracts" but like Southwest's scope section, not much is needed to state "all Delta flying will be performed by Delta pilots in accordance with the Delta Pilot Working Agreement." Seventeen words.
Back in those days ASA did not perform "Delta flying." ASA had it's own code, it's own marketing, revenue and ticket sales. In some markets it competed with Delta. It was run by Robert Priddy who went straight to the creation of AirTran doing the same thing.
ASA was a codeshare partner, meaning that Delta could put passengers on ASA, but they also handed over nearly all, 98% of the ticket price to ASA to fly what then became ASA's passenger.
This is a much different arrangement than buying ASA, canceling all of ASA's code and calling it "Delta" while keeping all the money.
The ASA pilots were, by any definition, an acquired airline; just like Northwest Airlines. They deserved a merger. The Delta MEC (JJ O'Donnell & Giambusso) created this alter-ego scope **** show out of pure ****ing bigotry and a desire to do favors for their squadron buddies rather than follow ALPA's Admin Manual and do their jobs.
We've had to live with the mess and it has cost our pilots hundreds of millions of dollars in aggregate and cost our employer billions. The sooner we end this the better.
Scope = ALL DELTA FLYING DONE BY DELTA PILOTS