ACA, Delta, Skyway 328JET press releases

[FDJ2]

What is really interesting is that this points directly to the irrelevance of the touted "Scope Clause" in the Delta PWA. If in fact all that has to be done to avoid the scope clause is the initiation of multiple certificates it follows that the scope clause is impotent and useless.

Surplus, your premise is wrong from the start, since for the purposes of the Delta PWA a "domestic air carrier" is defined in 49 U.S.C. Section 40102(a)(2), not by the FAA and not by which certificate it flies under. Since much of your argument is based on this false premise your point that scope is impotent and useless because it can be avoided by initiating multiple certificates is incorrect.

You are right that the DAL PWA is not binding on ACA, but it is binding on DAL, therefore DAL must conduct its dealings in accordance with the DAL PWA and it is binding and lawful.

 

[jobear]

I must say Surplus your points seem valid up to where you said that NWA was in competition with Midwest Airlines. IF the red tails wanted MKE and MEA to go the way of the Dodo's all they would have to do is flood it with cheap seats and they would run Uncle timmy's airline into the ground in a week.

The fact that Skyway is most likely going to take over the ACA flying should actually help CMR/ASA get more A/C. Delta wants as many of those 328 hulls out of the system as possible,WHY? If someone else owns some of them the DCI can grow CMR/ASA.

Rumor mill has it SYX will buy(?) 10 hulls for our own fleet. Since ACA is dropping the BOS base SYX will not need 30 328's to fly the ACA routes out of CVG. How many cities are served by ACA from CVG?

Jobear

 

[j41driver]

Rumor mill has it SYX will buy(?) 10 hulls for our own fleet. Since ACA is dropping the BOS base SYX will not need 30 328's to fly the ACA routes out of CVG. How many cities are served by ACA from CVG?

Not sure how many cities but there are approx. 20 328's in CVG and 10 in BOS so it stands to reason that Skyway would only need approx 20 airplanes to do our CVG routes.

 

[surplus1]

FDJ2,

Take a second look at what I said, please. I did NOT say that another certificate allows circumvention of your Scope clause. That is not my premise at all. I said that IF this were so, it would render your scope impotent, which it would. The premise was that of the person to whom I responded.

If his premise is not accurate, then it follows there is no difference between the Dornier being operated by ACA (because they will have Airbus aircraft) or Skyway because Midwest has Douglas aircraft. The only "difference" between the two is the referenced certificate.

You are correct about the language of the Delta PWA. My point is really quite simple. The language itself is useless because it is not legally enforceable unless the offender, in this case ACA or SKY, chooses to endorse the provisions of your PWA via language in their contract with Delta. Most airlines, even regional airlines, have not yet been desperate enough to do that.

Why on earth would any viable business give the Delta pilots the right to dictate whom it will do business with or what its business plan should be?

You are attempting to do the same thing that USAirways pilots tried to do. The result was Freedom and later Republic, both of which did circumvent the Scope clause. That is because both Mesa Air Group management and Chautauqua management didn't have the guts to tell USAG where to go and found the way around it by creating alter egos. In turn, the union that created the mess wound up by forcing the Mesa pilots into an abomination of a contract, plus both Mesa and CHQ pilots abidicated their seniority via Jets for Jobs in an effort to regain control of the alter egos.

Management knows what it is doing with this issue, and the labor union (ALPA) is engaged in illegal practices against its own members.

In the ACA scenario the Company (Delta) is not enforcing your Scope. It is acting on the basis of its own contract with ACA and the relevant escape clause (termination without cause).

This kind of garbage scope is exactly why your company wound up having to buy Comair and it is why ACA told UAL to go to he!!. UAL couldn't buy ACA because they are bankrupt. At the time Delta had lots of money and it could and did buy Comair. Otherwise, Comair management would have done exactly what ACA management did vis a vis UAL, i.e., told you to pound sand.

There was no six month escape clause in Comair's contract with Delta. The ten year contract was expiring and CMR would not accept Delta's terms for a renewal, nor would Delta accept Comair's. That left two options, buy us or watch us continue on our own way and lose your lift. It is obvious which course Delta decided to take.

If you do not believe that Delta cutting a deal with Skyway bypasses your scope then please tell me why. Why does that transaction comply with your scope clause if the ACA transaction does not? What makes it "different"?

I would also like you to tell me why the CHQ deal with UAL, which will result in the operation of aircraft with more than 70-seats by CHQ, does not violate your scope. Tell me also what you intend to do about it. Are you going to tell Delta that it has to cancel its contract with Chautauqa? Would you like to take bets on how soon they'll do that? There are multiple certificates at Chautauqua too (their own plus Republic), but both of those carriers will soon be operating aircraft with more than 70-seats. What are the Delta pilots going to do about it?

To the Skyway folks --- Please do not think that I am against your making a deal with Delta. I am not opposed, hope you get the contract and wish you well.

Surplus, your premise is wrong from the start, since for the purposes of the Delta PWA a "domestic air carrier" is defined in 49 U.S.C. Section 40102(a)(2), not by the FAA and not by which certificate it flies under. Since much of your argument is based on this false premise your point that scope is impotent and useless because it can be avoided by initiating multiple certificates is incorrect.

You are right that the DAL PWA is not binding on ACA, but it is binding on DAL, therefore DAL must conduct its dealings in accordance with the DAL PWA and it is binding and lawful.

 

[surplus1]

General,

Please understand that my references to restrictive scope clauses are not intended to be singling out and "picking on Delta pilots" specifically. The problem is by no means limited to DAL. This problem is a policy of ALPA, which is endorsed by all the major airlines that could do so, AAA, UAL, NWA, DAL, to a lesser extent CAL (not then in ALPA) and AA (represented by the APA). Even TWA, at a time when it desperately needed all the feed it could get, was limiting that feed with scope. My rhetoric is not anti-Delta per se, I'm against all of it and specifically opposed to the ALPA policy.

You are very correct when you say there is a limit to the number of RJs required. That is not different than any other type of aircraft. There is a limit to the number of triple sevens, 767's, 747's, DC-9's and anything else you can think of. The error lies in the attempt to isolate the RJ as though it were some sort of alien vessel. The RJ is an airliner, nothing more and nothing less. It isn't going to take over the world and replace any other aircraft type. How many RJ as used by the assorted airlines will ultimately be determined by market forces. It will not be determined by any Scope clause

The "restrictions" only become a problem when they are artificial. In turn they become artificial when they are the product of scope clauses and not market forces.

Everyone needs Scope and should have scope in their contract. However, scope is not and should not be a vehicle used to dictate what aircraft a company may operate either by type or number or where they should fly. That type of restriction is a misapplication of Scope and more importantly it is stupid.

I have no objection to you (as a pilot group) defining your work and who may do it. However, your Scope and that of the other legacy airlines attempts to define my work as well as your own. That you cannot do without my consent and it has not been given. When you attempt to do that you become not a protector of your own work but a predator of my work.

At one point in time you (at DAL) had no Scope at all. Then you created it. Next you created exemptions to it. The exemptions were an error. By the time you realized the error, the Company had already utilized the exemptions. New companies came into existence and began to do the work that you chose to give up, not because you had to but because you considered it to be beneath you. It was not imposed upon you, you got what you wanted. Now, after the fact, you want to reinvent the wheel and reverse your previous actions. Some would say "you're a day late and a dollar short."

You changed your scope again and drew a line in the sand at 70-seats (without limits). You really didn't have a right to draw that line, but it was not contested so that set a precedent; one that was essentially accepted by the other groups that by now were doing the work you hand rejected and subcontracting with your company. Once more, that did not satisfy you so you took yet another step. You limited the number of 70-seaters and restricted the operation of the 50-seaters (which has the effect of limiting them). Not only that, you did it in a way that promoted the company's ability to play the subsidiaries and the subcontractors against each other. Perhaps you'll say you never thought of that part, but I say it was deliberate. Well, that definitely got our attention and took the lid off Pandora's box. You threw down a gauntlet never expecting that we would pick it up. You were wrong.

As if that wasn't enough, you also believe that you can prevent by force an independent company from doing business with a third party that has no relationship to your own company. That last item caused the creation of Freedom Air and more recently Republic. It is now causing the cancellation of the ACA contract, which may well result in the furlough of some 300 ACA pilots. What will you do next? What new scheme will your lawyers (who by the way are theoretically our lawyers too -- pretty laughable isn't it) come up with on the next go around? Will you try again to transfer all of the 70-seaters to your side of the fence? Seeing as how you've been trying to do just that for several years, tell me why I should not believe that your negotiators are trying at this very moment. Tell me why I should believe that you will not try again when Section 6 comes around. Should I really be naïve enough to believe that your group is not using my future as a bargaining chip in your negotiations?

Your statement that "Dalpa gave (us) more relief" is ludicrous. You gave us nothing. The Company forced you into giving them more relief. There was nothing "generous" about your actions so spare me the implication. You did not do it because you wanted to, you did it because you had to. Some regional pilots are easily duped by that sort of mainline rhetoric. Few of them reside at Comair.

All of that would be fine except for two things. 1) There are people just like you who earn their living in the airlines that operate those smaller aircraft. 2) They are represented by the same labor union that represents you. What you consider to be your "reasonable" restrictions, limits and destroys the lives of other pilots in different airlines, none of whom agreed to be limited in that way.

When all of that failed because of the many loopholes in these assorted CBA's, you take yet another step and demand that your pilots be given super seniority at other airlines plus higher pay for the same work. The greatest irony in it all is that the very labor union that these small airplane pilots pay to represent their interests is actively promoting your interests at their expense and over their objections; a direct violation of the union's legal obligation to fairly represent its members.

I don't know if RJs can compete with the LCC's or not but I agree with the concept that they cannot. What I do know is that determination cannot be made by a Scope clause. I don't know if RJs will in fact clutter the airspace and saturate the ATC system. I do know that you can't decide that with a Scope clause. Market forces, operational decisions made by management and government control of airspace, properly determine these factors, not a Scope clause. Attempts to promote those concepts in defense of Scope are at best specious.

The idea that a particular pilot group has the right to tell a company, which does not employ any of its members, that it cannot enter into a legal contract with another company that has nothing to do with the first group is an absurdity in the extreme. And yes, that is exactly what ALPA/AAA told MASG. 'You MASG have a contract with AAA, therefore AAA's pilots have the right to prevent you from entering into a completely separate agreement with AWA.' Why? Because that separate contract will cause you to operate airplanes with 90-seats and WE, the Air Line Pilots Association, don't think you should. Or, 'you ACA can't have a contract with DAL to operate some 32-seat airplanes if you also operate some 120-seat airplanes.' Why? Because we the pilots of Delta Air Lines say so. I mean really, who the he!! Do you guys think you are? That kind of BS staggers the imagination.

Can you get away with it? Well, maybe you can because the Air Line Pilots Association has managed to brainwash a bunch of young pilots into believing that your employment by UAL, NWA, DAL, AAA, or CAL somehow gives you the "right" to do this because you belong to the "ruling class" and they are lesser beings, subservient to your wishes. You are not really working against their interests, you a "defending the profession". A high percentage of regional pilots actually believe that BS. At the same time, ALPA is more than willing to take the money of these young people and claim that it represents them.

Racial apartheid was an abomination and eventually it was defeated. This practice of pilot apartheid is no less an abomination and it too will be defeated. Your predatory scope clauses will ultimately be overturned by the courts and prohibited in the future.

Does that mean that all Scope will be eliminated? NO, it does not. It means that Scope will be returned to its legitimate purpose. Will that cause a fight for the 100-seat airplane? That depends on how you react. If you choose to accept the fact that you do not have the legal right to unilaterally decide the future of others and how their work is controlled, an agreement that establishes a legitimate dividing line can be reached. If you continue to believe that you can do as you please without regard for the impact of your actions on others, then it will create a fight for the 100-seat airplane and possibly all the rest as well. A fight that I don't think you can win.

If you really want to keep what you have over the long term, i.e., your high pay, excellent benefits and superior working conditions, you might be well advised to come down off the high horse and negotiate a reasonable dividing line to which we can both agree, thereby ending the dispute. If you won't do that, you'll have to deal with whatever consequence develops. You will still be able to retain the big airplanes, but the price you'll have to pay for that privilege will surely bring you to your senses.

One thing I'll tell you for sure and it is this: In my opinion, ALPA will never be able to impose a "Jets for Jobs" agreement on the Comair property. I don't think that Comair pilots will ever allow the pilots of another airline to displace them or force them to abdicate their seniority by any means other than a legitimate merger agreement reached via the standard protocols. Don't look for a pre-nuptial agreement that gives you all the marbles, you won't get it. You are big, you are strong, you are powerful, but you will not find us lacking in ball power.

Happy Easter