Scoop

Opus,
I don't think they are "mute" as a matter of of fact I wouldn't even say they are moot. You are correct about the M-88 fleet but wrong about the 767 fleet. The -88's are getting old - but we could replace them over 5-10 years, none are currently being taken out of service today which is the difference between them and your DC-9s. Is your fleet getting smaller or not this year? We have already parked/sold our 767-200's and only have -300's, 400's, and ER's. This is the problem - we have already lived through our fleet shrinkage over the last 5 years and are now finally starting to grow. It appears NW is just getting around to parking a lot of arirframes with some possible healthy airframe orders. Why would we as a pilot group want to lose seniority by merging with NW when we are hiring 70-100 a month. You guys have some good orders - these aircraft are not paid for so couldn't Delta also order more aircraft? Your friend might be for this merger but the vast majority of Delta pilots want nothing to do with it. Hopefully it will all blow over anyway but if it does go through and goes to arbitration it will be a diaster ala US Air. How will the NW guys like working for Delta but receiving a 15-20% less paycheck then the Delta pilots for years as this is fought out. Not to mention the loss of equity stake for all pilots. We will all be better off alone - the demographics of the two pilot groups are too dissimilar and both groups think they will lose too much so it would be ugly and protracted which would suck for all of us.
Scoop