Carl, It is a bit hard to tell fact from fiction in all this. I am Delta pilot who was picked up on one of the mergers. I have no problem with how Delta treated us in the merger. There are always those that are ****ed off after a merger. Overall Delta's mergers have had far less issues and problems then almost any other airline. To contrast the Delta-Western merger with the NWA-Republic merger would be like comparing a BB gun to a Howitzer. As far as he said she said I am inclined to go with Delta when looking at the facts and when talking with pilots who are friends at NWA. They even realize what has happened. Sometimes you have to read between the lines. One simple example is the statements about what Delta opened for. From day one it was stated that it was a straight ratio keeping every pilot about in their pre merger position. It was only a opening position but one that on one would argue was a unreasonable opening position to start from. NWA pilots were fed stories that this was not the opener and posted those stories in several forums. Finally in one of NWA's just the facts they admitted that the Delta opener was just what we had posted. Strangely however to this day they have not published their own opener.
The NWA mec has stated over and over again that Delta walked away from negotiations. What they don't mention is what caused us to walk away. NWA's committee came to DALPA with a proposal. We accepted it in principle and it looked like a agreement might be at hand. Then in a two day period they reverse their own proposal and come back with something far worse for Delta pilots. In the middle of all this your committee chairman was either fired or quit for reasons unknown. Working in the background you had factions observing and advising the committee. These observers appeared to be factions for red book or green book pilots and had different views on how the list should be merged. Makes it a bit tough on the Delta side when the NWA side does not have a uniform position and reputes their own position. Who were these observers and why where they there? Please tell us!
Then we had LOA 19. The NWA MEC claims they were blindsided by the agreement and had no idea that talks were going on. I am a lowly line puke and I knew talks were going on. The press had picked up and published stories that talks were ongoing. You had a voting rep on the BOD who had to know talks were going on. If you really were blindsided it could only be because of incompetence somewhere. Oh and you did show up for the process just 7 days late where you asssumed there would be a extension of management deadline to annouce the merger. Sadly there was no extension this time. Sounds like a bad assumption was made.
If the Delta pilots are so one sided how is it that the joint contract agreement that was reached gave 3 out of every 4 dollars to the smaller NWA pilot group? Kind of staggering numbers. That ratio does not include the ongoing funding requirements of the frozen NWA plan were every dollar goes to the NWA pilots. This is estimated at 25 to 30 million dollars a year but could go far higher depending on investment returns.
In the end we both lost by not reaching a agreement however NWA lost far more. It is unlikely the coming arbitration will stray to far from Dalpa last table position. It might be a bit better for NWA or it might be a bit better for Delta however in the end will be close. Even if it goes well for NWA the money lost from the joint contract will never be offset by the potentional gains in seniority. The time value of money makes this huge. I know for a fact some NWA pilots understand this and have run numbers. They are asking their MEC for answers about what happened. Hopefully they will get some response.