Sailingfun, I'm not confident that your assessment this deal allows for arbitration is accurate. My understanding is that the companies would be "forced" merged if the DAL scope section was NOT given relief. Otherwise, why the relief? When DAL bought Comair, the contract had scope and the Comair MEC tried to initiated a PID. That went nowhere because it was not considered a merger.

I believe the same applies here, only the scope relief is for ac larger than the 76 seats permitted in the contract. The contract relief will allow for two separate operations. This is perhaps one of the few ways to get the deal announced and not put the DAL group in a forced situation. If the DAL MEC said no before to arbitration, then why risk it now after holding the keys to move this deal forward? The only thing that has changed is the speed at which forced arbitration would occur. Makes little sense.

 

Hi Flyer. The main sticking point in our scope has nothing to due with the number of seats on RJ's. It is the permitted number of international code share block hours. The combined operations would be well over those numbers. In addition the total number of RJ's in the two operations would exceed the number allowed in the Delta contract by a large amount. The company needs relief on those items or they would have to pull down a large amount of international flying and RJ feed.

As far as arbitration the merger would proceed as all mergers in the past have. Our contract requires the company to follow ALPA merger policy as I suspect your contract also does. If either side feels a fair agreement can't be reached then it goes to arbitration. There is no attempt to force anything on the NWA pilots and you will have full control over the process and if it ends up in arbitration.