Joe,
Here is the main problem with your argument of Delta pilots taking your job and your flying. It is not your flying. ASA has never in the time that you have been there sold an ASA ticket for an ASA flight to go from ATL to Hilton Head, SC or even the Redneck riviera, Panama City. Those have been Delta bought codes and routes for longer than both of us have been in this business. The same goes for every regional bar three that I can think of: Comair did a little, ACA, and Air Wisconsin are the main ones that come to mind.
If I take "your" job to fly a T-prop or a 76 seat jet to fly a Delta owned code route from ATL to PNS then so be it. I happen to work for the company that owns the flying. As soon as you realize that management constantly lies, there primary goal is job protection and pleasing the stockholder (BOD) then life becomes really simple. If Delta continues within the next several years to reduce the impact that our regional carriers have on our operation then your management will blame it on all the Mainline pilots forcing management to take your job away from you. If Delta starts to increase the utilization of regionals I can bet you a cup of coffee that my management will blame it on our Union not willing to subcomb to their demands. (Well maybe not as long as Moak is there)
I do not wish any malious on you or anyone else but it is the Contractors (Delta) flying, not the sub contractors (ASA, et all).
You are right that ALPA needs to figure out what it wants to do. Does it want to be a "therapist" and tell all of us its going to be alright or decide to finally tell everyone the reality of life. By the way I personally don't have the slightest clue what "the reality" is.
Please don't take it personally, I don't. But if flying a 76 seat jet at a comparable wage to what I am making now offers me a better quality of life and more time for baseball games, dates with the wife, and more rounds of golf: and if that flying is owned by Delta then I want it and I am willing to fight tooth and nail for it. Are you willing to lower your wage and undercut Mainline rates and work rules for job protection? Managment is banking on it.
Your experience in the aviation system should be accounted for if you decide to change jobs. I do not believe in transferable seniority if you leave one company for another. What I think would be more appropriate would be a pay rate comensurate with your experience based on your job description. What that pay rate is I do not have the foggiest. Your experience in the aviation world is something that needs to be paid for by the company. You have flying into the same airports as me, dealing with the same issues for the most part, why not pay you for your level of experience? The devil is in the details. DOH is a mute point and will go nowhere with any Mainline pilot. The old guys refuse it, the military guys don't necessarily understand it, and the regional guys that left there old company to start at Delta will never let your 15 years at ASA ever trump them because they chose to leave and try another gig. That is the ugly truth to that matter.
ALPA has a lot of work to do and I am not sure if they are up to the task at the present time. This whole thing has become a cancer that needs to be looked at very soon or our entire profession will continue to degrade past the point of "Fancy Bus Driver".
Fair winds Joe and keep it dirty side down.
