Okay, you respond to the following quote from Check Essential: "The bankruptcy and the merger both came with relaxation of scope restrictions."

He is clearly talking about during the bankruptcy up until and including the merger. You present an argument that is based on everything that happened after the bankruptcy. See the problem?

Bottom line is that AA has significantly fewer RJ's (especially 70 seat+ RJ's) flying AA passengers around. I would say that their scope has been considerably more effective than ours has. And I have seen very little from our current MEC administration expressing any concern over the fact that such a HUGE percentage of our domestic product is now provided by outsourcing.

There can be many different variables that affect staffing. I think it's pretty obvious that one of the big variables affecting our pilot staffing has been outsourcing. AA... not so much. Show me definitively where that's wrong.

It's much worse than that, Moak is on record a number of times being critical of the APA's scope clause. He think it's been too restrictive and that the lost revenue has costs the AA pilots jobs & pay. He says the same thing about CAL, and connects both AA and COs scope clauses to the furloughs they have compared to DAL...of course completely ignoring UA, which has the loosest scope of all and is now furloughing thousands.

Yep- and you can see this repeated through his "minions."

As I recall at Northwest it was 90 PLUS an unlimited number of RJ-85's. Didn't matter because the RJ-85 operating cost was sky high for an RJ, but that is my recollection...

Okay, here is where you are wrong. First, Check Essential clearly stated that there have been numerous scope concessions since bankruptcy, and then stated it again. My point was that the only scope concessions made since Moak was elected were in bankruptcy. That bankruptcy concession was in April 2006, so I am talking about a 3.5 year period. During that period, every scope change has been a gain for the pilots. I am not twisting the argument, I am responding to his claims. I will repeat that the problems faced in bankruptcy are not trivial. If you can't recognize the magnitude of the issues faced in bankruptcy then there is little point arguing any more.

Secondly, since we exited bankruptcy Delta has increased the number of mainline pilots (exclusive of the merger) and American has decreased the number of mainline pilots, decreased to the point that they filed a grievance over minimum size of the pilot group. They lost the grievance. Explain that.

Seriously? Are you really sure you want to leave a written record suggesting that wholesale outsourcing is the reason DAL has expanded and in-sourcing is the reason AMR has contracted? I mean Moak has suggested this on a number of occasions but his minions will deny, deny, deny. The written word is forever.

This is really counterproductive to argue about what's already been done. One thing is for sure though and that is if DAL continues to outsource more and more domestic flying to regionals using 76 plus RJs, it looks bleak for those of us trying to make it to mothership Delta. I think this age 65 rule has compounded and severely aggravated our current sorry situation.

Riddle me this 88drivr;you are saying that we should have AA's scope with their 2000 plus furloughs ? I guess that's 1 way to handle scope,make the bottom 2000 DL pilots RJ pilots. Brilliant ! In reality scope has become a very complex issue with no simple answers except we will give no more,I think most everybody agrees on that.Good articles in the ROAR about scope and how we got to where we are and oh by the way they are factual.

How do they run or feed their system with so few RJs? Maybe it's the 260 Super 80s they have to fDL's 132 -88s/90s (or the 100 737s to fDL's 81). Looks to me like their tougher scope has caused the company to keep a lot of those pesky high paying jobs around.

101% Agreed

Also scope isn't a RJ-only issue. JV codeshare, strategic partnership whatever,

we better watch every minute
and every seat
every flight

Plenty examples out there, don't misunderestimate all airline mgmts ability to find a loophole or reinterpretation ;-)

Cheers
George