What confuses me is the blending of flight operations procedures with union matters. I think you would agree that the union has no control over flight operations policies in regards to their integration decisions. Whatever accommodation was made by any pilot group had to do with pilots complying with flight operations policies. The Delta pilots had no control over that process. Everyone recognizes that the north pilots made more changes in this regard. How this should affect union policies is beyond me.

As for the union matters, I think even you acknowledge that the merger was handled quite differently by each side. The Delta MEC avoided the type of divisive rhetoric that usually accompanies mergers and the NWA MEC did not. That is why you have a situation where the fDelta pilots don't have lingering resentments against the fNWA pilots, while the fNWA pilots seem to have a decent amount of resentment. These resentments, along with the upheaval caused by Flight Operations policies, have from time to time been used as a whip to try to affect union matters. To the extent that has occurred, it needs to stop. So to the effect that some feelings are "symptomatic of underlying issues" I think it is important to recognize that some of those underlying issues are the direct result of the actions that the NWA MEC took during the months leading up to the merger. While the NWA MEC officers are gone, many of the same players are in positions of leadership today. My opinion is that those players should work to fix those "underlying issues" to the extent that they caused them in the first place.

As for the fNWA reps getting with the program, my observation is that coming into the merger, the Delta MEC was considered the most effective MEC in ALPA. We came through bankruptcy with a pilot group that was unified and supported the union. The favorable ratings amongst the pilots were as high as they had ever been. We had a record of a series of improvements to our contract that were helping dig out of the bankruptcy funk. We had influence on Capitol Hill to get legislation passed for more favorable tax treatment for bankruptcy returns. We had influence with investors and the Board of Directors enough that we were able to convince them to follow our plan to facilitate the merger. You can look back 5 years or more and you will not find a local council communication that attacks another council or a member of the administration. This is not to say we didn't have internal disagreements, it is just we kept them internal like all effective organizations do.

Certainly there is "home team favoritism" in my view. Like everyone else on this board this is just my view and is equally worthless as the rest of the opinions expressed here. However, I don't think you can look at the former NWA MEC and their performance through the merger and say they had the same unity, performance, or influence that the Delta MEC had. You correctly point out that now that SOC has been achieved, then the best policies from NWA flight operations should be adopted by the combined flight operations. The gauge should be performance and not who initiated the policy.

If you apply the same standard to the MEC structures, you should try to adopt the practices that produced the best performance. In my view, that means that most of the policies and standards of the Delta MEC should be adopted. Again there is home team chauvinism, but in the years leading up to the merger and through the merger, the Delta MEC got the moniker of the "Delta machine." That came from an MEC that acted with unity of purpose and avoided internal attacks to try to gain political power. We did not have political "camps" that tried to put pilots in one group or the other.

So to that extent, I do think the fNWA reps should change more to adapt to a structure that produced better performance. It doesn't mean that everything that came from up north should be discarded, if people can show that their policies have a record of producing superior performance then they should be adopted. How many times have we heard fNWA pilots say, "I have seen both ways, and our way is better." That is how I feel about the two MEC's performance.

The toughest thing for a rep to get his head around is that he doesn't represent the pilots in his base, he doesn't represent the pilots from his old airline, he represents all 12,000 pilots. We don't have a north contract or a south contract or an MSP contract or an ATL contract, we have one contract. Everything the MEC does affects all the pilots. When an MEC member says something about "my guys..." he better be thinking about all 12,000. Right now, I still get the sense that when many north reps say "my guys..." they are talking about 5,000 pilots. In my opinion, that is a hurdle they have to cross soon too.