Eric you "innocent bystander"...might I add "naive" to that description, too? The pre-merger payrates on NW's 32 A330s were only $1.50/hr more than DL's 80 767- 300s and 137 757s. ( that's 217 DL widebody/ medium narrowbody aircraft paying virtually the same, $160+ 1.5/hr., as 32 NW widebody aircraft, that is, DL had nearly 7 times...that's right!...count 'em!...SEVEN TIMES the number of aircraft that NW had in that pay range.) The pre-merger pay rates on the 21 DL 767-400s were approx. $18-20/hr. more than the 767-300/A330, about the same as the NW 747s. The 10 DL 777s of course, payed the most of all. The reckoning that is done to find a fair SLI is based entirely on:......(suspense)......What the two respective pilot groups BRING (in terms of quality jobs) to the merger!!!!! Now, that preamble over with, -to actually answer your question....those payrates on those particular aircraft were all we (DL and NW) could "get" out of management. To have set the 747 pay from the JPWA as the highest and then "rationalized" payrates on smaller aircraft based on that, -would have resulted in significant pay CUTS for the 777 and 76-400. (we all know how well that would have "worked"!) As it was, though, the 777 and 76-400 pay stayed the same, and the 747 and A330 rates were RAISED to equal (or nearly so) them. (the adage "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" comes to mind) Every single NW pilot (100%) experienced a raise in payrates from the JPWA. The overwhelming "war-cry" from NW before and during those contract negotiations was "PARITY" (ie. a "raise" up to what the DL pilots had). NW got parity, but lately has tried, very disingenuously, to convince arbitrators that their raise up to parity was actually a decline to parity. And, last May and June, all the embellished rhetoric, hand-wringing, and gnashing of teeth about the injustice of a "B" scale was actually a fiendishly clever, Machiavellian attempt by the NW MEC to secure a "worse" and "lower paying" contract! (a devilishly duplicitous endeavor in which they not only succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, but won the overwhelming support (87%) of their unsuspecting rank-and-file membership!)