It will be a smart business move when they don't have enough pilots to fly the 700/900's because the pool of CFI's are bypassing EDV and going straight to the LCC's, so if DL wants to keep a 76 seater on a specific route, they will need to bring them up to mainline where someone will be happy to fly them at mainline rates and benefits.

 

That's better than nothing then. How much better is anyone's guess.

The key for weighing the value of that, if any, would be the legal aspect of it being binding or not in any way. Even if both leaderships agreed, there would be members who would sue under the false auspice of "ALPA merger policy" which is still fairly vague.

If wheels were put into motion and a merger (for lack of a better term) was happening, even if a staple were administratively agreed to on the front end, the incentive to sue for more than a staple would be irresistable and guaranteed.

Throw a pot of spaghetti on the wall and hope one piece sticks.

IMO the main way to do it would be to simply bring the large RJ's to mainline and start flying them ourselves, with corresponding contractual reductions or elimination of them as "permitted types". Do we still have well below market price pay tables for the E-190? That would need to be corrected or they would have a hiring crisis right now anyway. 717 parity would be required or it would be hard to attract as many "tier one" applicants.

The other way to do it, if they were serious, would be to agressively grow the bottom with "mainline" equipment while parking (and contractually reducing) large RJ's. Dusting off our parked 717's isn't enough. I'll maybe believe it when I see a large A-220-100 order, which will be never.

So far, the company has dug in to the large RJ number, wether they can staff them right now or not, as a sacred business model they would take a strike to liquidation to preserve.

By far the easiest and simplest way at this point would be to ramp up EDV hiring while making it even more linear (more "flows" and less out of order "off the streets") to somewhat further incentivise future NH's to stay. Then double down with eliminating "first year pay" and starting directly at second year pay with full line pay during training.

That would incentivise at least some who are leaving to stay and grind it out for a bit. But they don't want to do that, therefore the staffing crisis isn't bad enough. Worst case they just park some large RJ's until the next downturn. And there will be the next downturn. They'll do ANYthing to preserve their large RJ outsource model.

 

What benefit does DL have flying scope crippled jets? If they are going to be mainline aircraft, why not just have the pilots fly A220s? Not sure how a 76 seat or even 80 seat RJ works effectively, especially since we haven’t seen an A220-100 order for years, and that holds around 110.

 

Read my original post. Talk about moving goalposts, Ooff.

 

Thank you for answering my question.

 

If anything I've learned in the last 20 years of labor negotiations is, deals only stick if everyone is happy with the outcome. (ref: USAirways and Reno Air) A "staple" might make all the Delta pilots happy, but probably wouldn't make all the EDV pilots happy - just wait until they sue claiming their MEC didn't provide "Right to fair representation" and I think they'd have law to back them up - As we've seen, there are enough labor firms who will take that case, hoping for lots of billable hours.

So - the possible result could be an arbitrator insisting on a merged listed, not a staple.

To me, all the benefit of a merged list lies on the EDV side, while NONE exists on the Delta side. And the potential for an arbitrated list (that we would not like) as a possible outcome is medium to high.

I'd vote no on any deal.

 

Wouldn't be hard at all. Give them a seniority number then flow them as they bring airplanes onto the Delta cert.

 

There's clearly a strong market incentive for 76ish seat planes. Otherwise they would have parked them already instead of trying to put out staffing related helmet fires every day.

 

They want a more "controlled burn" approach than that though. They could already be doing 100% EDV classes every class if they wanted to.

 

The point it doesn't have to be a staple. There are other ways