Why would you want the flow to go if you were at Delta? Quite frankly, flowing down to Mesaba or Compass before the sale wouldn't have been a great time either after working at Delta. The point is that the option was better to many junior pilots than being furloughed and unemployed. Sure there are some that would prefer to go work somewhere else but others are okay being a CA on the 175 rather than drawing unemployment or sweeping floors at Lowes.

The flow down also creates a financial burden for the company due to the training cycles that it would cause and therefore it provides an incentive for them to try and avoid furloughs. For every flow-down at Compass you would have essentially created 4 training cycles. (1 = flow back training at compass, 2 = flow back training at DL after recall, 3 = CPZ upgrade to replace flow back pilot, 4 = new hire or recalled CPZ pilot).