Again, I am pretty sure that's not the exact same measure. Makes sense that it would include some 737 flying that isn't included in the new contract metric.

The company is in business to make money. They are not going to agree to protect every block hour flown today. Would you in their place given the current volatility worldwide and the potential for future financial meltdowns? The international landscape no longer changes every few years it changes almost daily.
The 650000 hour number is the total number of block hours flown at the time the company agreed to up the floor from 46.5 to 48.5 with the addition of Alitalia to the JV. The concept is we allow them to go back to 46.5 but keep worldwide protection at the level it was at then.
We currently are flying about 680,000 hours worldwide contrary to the constant forum posts about our shrinking international.
It's a give but overall with the other items mention changing in our favor I would take the new scope over what we have without factoring in any other aspects of the contract.

You are making my point for me. We will agree to shrinking to 650,000 hours when we currently fly 680,000.

The company doesn't have to agree to fly any amount of trips to any theater. They can cancel JVs anytime, and it sets them free. Right now, they have made a contractual agreement with us that in return for allowing the JVs to share our flying, we are protected by a certain percentage of flying. Get your JV partners in line if they are flying too many hours for not enough money. If we are not getting 50% (or 48.5%) of the flying, the company is cheating. If you don't show up to work 1.5% of the time, you get fired.

Likewise I don't know why some are spinning this as bad, "very bad." I'd be interested in specifically why you consider it "very bad," because right now I don't share that view. The sky is not falling on scope as far as I can see. It's different, maybe you see it as worse, but I see it as better. There is a lower EASK with one JV, but I'm more concerned about international shell game with affiliates and partners. If we are caught of guard with an affiliate shell game we might lose a great deal more than 1%. The new language is stronger in that area and it provides global protection, something that I think is important. Let's face it Air France, KLM and Alitalia may be JV partners, but they won't be our last JV. Aeromexico, Gol, and Korean might be next. Having a global minimum is good insurance in my book.

Well stated

Let's see:

Currently 50% not to go below 48.5%
Or, 46.5% not to go below 45.5%.

And this is better?

It's a TATL JV that involves access to EU flying, not a 4-country JV, so I think your ratio might actually be unfavorable if you count overall EU passengers, never mind populations within the Open Market. I don't know how they account for connections beyond the EU/Open Market or beyond the US. Would that skew the respective ratios even further?

The thing that's interesting to me is that since the JV was implemented, we took a large stake in VA, and that somehow doesn't end up counting against us in the TATL JV, even though we're circumventing it in a way that doesn't benefit the other partners. To further complicate matters, with the subsequent Brexit, you potentially lose the crowning jewel of the US-EU Open Skies agreement.

I think the share we should have is a philosophical point, and could be the topic of very lengthy discussions. The point of section 1 changes in the NNP seems to be to protect what we have. One significant liability of our current agreement is that we're poorly protected against reductions in flying (cutting back one A380 flown by two pilots = cutting back a 767 flown by 6). If EASK's is the only metric, and flying is pulled down, we hurt disproportionately more.

What happens when Alitalia drops out of the JV in 2017?

My guess is that will give Delta a lot of room to shrink our international operations and still be above the 46.5%.

Sorry, was off 1%:

Current baseline 50% / 48.5% due to operational buffer.

TA baseline 47.5%, 2 year average of 46.5%

All the contract language doesn't matter.

It is not enforceable.

After 2 years of non compliance we will file a grievance and after many more months of delay we will all get a check for $1200.

The positions lost forever.