I don't think anyone doubts your goal, and on the surface it looks great. We have the same goals, a win win. We've said that from the start. The problem is how to get there.
Well on that we can agree!
The proposal you guys don't seem to want to move from is great on day one. By year 5, not so good for us and by year 10 most of the positions in the upper 1/3 are all premerger Delta guys. It all goes back to demographics, we are older than you guys.
This is true, and you would have a great point, IF this SLI only lasted ten years. What about between years 10-20? The vast majority of the retirees will be current DAL guys. We all get to move up again.
We have argued how to get to what we both want since April. Please don't make it sound like it's easy and all we need to do is "listen to you" or "trust us".
I'm not saying that. There have no doubt been unrealistic proposals on both sides. I don't think that strict DOH is fair. The fact is that even with the whale and A330 (a great airplane, and you will enjoy where it is going to fly) we bring a lot more widebody aircraft to the mix. (I also don't think that stapling the bottom 400 NWA guys is fair either, but I digress).
Oh hell, I give up. We've all read this a million times and our opinions mean little. All I know is that DAL has merged with or acquired C&S in the 50s/60s, Northeast in the 70s, Western in the 80s, and some of Pan Am in the 90s. Not ONCE did the SLI go to an arbitrator, and I do believe that all the pilots in the prior airlines all did rather well in their career. That is what I and most other DAL guys want for all of us--NWA guys included!
Good luck to us all. Hopefully a year from now this will all be a dull memory clouded by one too many beers.