Thanks for the well-wishes. I've left the industry before, and I can leave it again tomorrow if I choose to. The Comair experience pushed me to achieve things outside the industry I never would have needed to had it been roses and chocolates. As a result, my participation in the industry, and my employer's future is, well...irrelevant.

 

How did ALPA have any influence over Delta's decision to shut down Comair?

 

It only took Delta 11 years to take action after the strike. Obviously the strike was the reason Comair was shut down.

 

More to the point a single letter from the Comair union sealed their fate.

 

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I don't think business decisions are made with malice and retribution in mind. They are mostly made by bean-counters who examine costs and benefits. Comair's costs had gotten way above the mean, and Delta decided to shut it down.

I doubt it was a "Why, why we'll show them" moment.

 

Actually the shut down was more of an unintended consequence of the bankruptcy vs some vendetta.

As I said before, if you weren't actually there and understood what happened from being inside it and involved with it, then you can't really intelligently speak about it.

But everyone does love a conspiracy theory... Just witness this presidential election cycle.

Enjoy.

 

LOL do tell what "letter" that was.

I think you may be referring to the furloughed pilots getting pref interviews issue. At the time ASA policy was to not ask or require resignations from any furloughed pilots, so they just kept doing what they were doing and some puffed up their chests like it was some big solidarity thing. CMR long standing preexisting policy was to require letters of resignation and they did. Many UAL, USAir and other pilots went there when times were lean, wrote those resignation letters, because they knew their airlines, evil managers that they were, would at the very least throw those letters in the trash. And they ALL did.

Except DL for some reason. DL management was the only legacy that said they would honor those letters, obviously written under duress from pilots in hard times trying to get a small salary and some health insurance etc. That was 100% DL management. 100%.

By the time it became an issue at the MEC level, there was already bad blood between the DL and CMR MEC's (due in no small part to the CMR MEC's extreme arrogance to be sure). The DL MEC was embarrassed that they were the only airline in the country that actually threatened to honor those letters and they wanted to save face. So they asked the CMR MEC to write a toothless letter to CMR management. CMR MEC said it wouldn't matter, as CMR wouldn't change their policy. DL MEC said that didn't matter, just write the letter so we can say we tried and then they could wash their hands of the matter, and oh by the way if they didn't write it, DL was going to blackball them as punishment.

Instead of writing it, even though it would have changed nothing, the CMR MEC got all defensive and said "oh yeah, well then you should loosen scope first and we'll consider it" knowing full well that also wasn't going to happen. The DL MEC lost face but didn't care because now they had a scapegoat. It was all evil CMR's fault. They further elevated their own lack of effectiveness by acting like ASA rushed to their brother pilots in their hour of need, when in reality ASA simply conducted business as usual.

When hiring resumed, for the first couple years ASA pilots were taken with extreme prejudice while only a few token CMR pilots were. The funny thing about that is the CMR membership was in favor of advocating for a policy change (even though CMR management said no way) and the arrogant CMR MEC didn't want rank and file CMR pilots to "jump the line" to DL ahead of their little seniority grab attempt in the first place. So the power brokers on both sides got their hubris on, while the rank and file on both sides got screwed.

So no, that was defiantly not a reason CMR was shut down. It was DL management, 100%, who insisted that those letters would be honored, even though no other airline in the country honored them. So that can not possibly be the reason that DL management pulled down CMR. It was DL management that was stabbing furloughed pilots in the backs, not CMR. They didn't make a symbolic show of support that wouldn't have changed anything, and yes they should have, but this was 100% on DL who owned CMR 100% and could have instantly changed that shameful policy by either disregarding resignation letters or simply picking up the phone and ordering CMR to stop requiring them. Yet they did neither.

 

I kind of miss soaper!

 

I doubt many pilots miss soaper.

 

Maybe JC, they seemed close!