I'd like to chime in regarding the whole negotiations process.
I'll lead by saying that I unabashedly love Delta Air Lines. Any company that will pay me to do something I'd gladly pay to do is aces in my book.
Having said that, however, friends are friends and business is business. Contract negotiations are business.
When I led a negotiating team during a grad school exercise (
- I know), we prepared thusly:
1. Listed our wants and needs.
2. Assigned numerical values to these wants and needs.
3. Had a base number lower than which continued negotiations weren't productive. This was our "walk away" number.
The other side came to the table with a similar matrix. We cut a deal that let us shake hands over a deal that came out above both of our base numbers, but was nowhere near the high end of either of our totals.
This forum is a great place to spitball our wants and needs, but serious talks about their hierarchy (or their numerical value), must happen behind the semi-closed doors of the ALPA website. Now, we know that our beloved DAL is in court fighting against plausible charges of e-mail hacking against one of its critics, so I think it's unreasonable to expect that the ALPA website is anything like a locked room. But by moving a nitty-gritty conversation into an ALPA virtual conference room, we at least expose DAL to serious repercussions if we catch it listening in.
Having said all that, I'm for pay scale restoration and a solid scope clause that restricts all flying over 70 seats to DAL mainline (But I'd make 50 part of my opening bid).
But, hey, wouldn't that cost the airline a whole lot of money? Wouldn't the American public hate us? Wouldn't the sky fall? First, DAL was willing to drop$1.1B on JAL. DAL just announced that it's going to drop $1B so rich people can lie flight on the punishingly long trip to London. DAL can afford to drop a couple of hundred million on us pilots. Second, we aren't negotiating with the American public. We're negotiating with the management of DAL. Third, the sky won't fall - we'll hold it up with our egos.
Thanks for reading, and fly safely.