I would say you provided a bad example. Because, I don't believe 9E parents have priority over active DL parents.

Understandable. I'm not saying one way or the other, there are too many factors to consider. I'm just discussing possible reasons why Delta decided what they did.

Mush like you said earlier, I would say you ignored the point for obvious reasons...

9E family, like in your previous example, getting better standby status go ahead of Delta retirees/parents. You’re just changing your example to fit your sob story.

Hah, actually you're right. After reading your post again your point is absolutely valid. However, we could make the same comparisons all day. The question is which situation occurs more often and is more expensive for Delta? Why did Delta make the choice?

Are you that ignorant? Retirement and our pay was also “ protected” by the Pilot contract - I guess we sold them for less vacation because that went away too.

I don’t know what you were doing in the early 2000s but I lived through that time as a furloughee and my recollection is a little different than yours.


The logic of this whole “scope sale issue” is flawed. Let’s follow this flawed logic a bit:

I guess the theory is RJ Pilots got stuck at the regionals for years with substandard conditions. Well most regionals had contracts - why didn’t they just negotiate a better contract? Oh because they had zero clout and little leverage and were basically along for the ride.

Now look at mainline. We had so much clout and leverage that we took a 42% payout, gave up our pensions, lost 2 weeks vacation, numerous QOL items and, well the list goes on.

And yet under these conditions, with up to 1300 Pilots furloughed we were not able to tighten up or hold the line on Scope. How shocking. I guess this is why conditions at the regionals were so bad for so long - because the capabilities of a union are determined first and foremost by market conditions. The same conditions that prevented regional pilots from improving their conditions are what allowed Delta
and other airline managements to to decimate our PWA, our whole PWA from front to back and Scope was no exception.

But hey, cue Dick Dastardly twirling his mustache eagerly selling scope for, for what? A 42% pay cut? It’s a much better story.

Scoop

He was probably in grade school when all this was going on and just parrots what he hears without any factual knowledge or background.

1. I’m not ignorant. 2. I understand that bankruptcy and other situations and the time is what took us to this point. 3. My point to his reply is that the retirees are not only pilots, there’s so many people that had/have no voice/vote in what the company wants to do with the scope and they also help to build the company the way it is today.

The only and single line of defense for scope is the pilot group.

I'm still not sure what you're trying to sell. You're basically saying that the pilot group, who ultimately voted to sell their scope and allow hundreds of jets to be flown by contractors instead of whatever other options they had, also ultimately voted on the behalf of every other DL work group to allow their benefits to be degraded by those same contractors.

Your single line of defense doesn't seem to have a great history.

What does any of this have to do with scope? The change was for preventing bumping passengers. Delta management could have put any vendor ahead of other employee groups on the flight benefits, not just regional airlines.

You are correct that the Pilot group was and is the line of defense for Scope. What I am trying to point out is that our whole PWA was decimated during a time when Pilots had zero clout.

I could see the whole Scope sale issue if we were making gains in other areas of our PWA and losing ground on Scope. Bottom line is mainline Pilot groups were taken to the cleaners in every part of our contract including Scope not at the expense of Scope.

Since about 2012 DALPA has done quite well with Scope. Not perfect but pretty good. The percentage of passengers flown by connection carriers, perhaps the most important metric, has come way down.