You are lucky that Delta even lets you occupy passenger seats.
Seriously? I <3 the mainline Delta sense of entitlement.
When you (I'm looking at you early-90's DALPA) or your management agree to farm out the feed rather than fly those airplanes yourselves...those employees that put their blood, sweat, and tears into protecting a product and brand that isn't even theirs (and, in many cases, doing it better than your own people do) deserve and have earned the priveledge to have that one little perk of boarding priority. Allowing the people who operate and maintain a certain fleet aircraft a little extra priority on the fleet they are entrusted to care for makes sense. It's a shame that Comair and the other DCI carriers have lost this well-earned priority.
Ya know, I have on many occasion gone outta my way (roughly 600 miles outta my way each time) to let a mainline Delta pilot take a jumpseat ahead of me even when my company's J/S priority would allow me to be a complete jerk and see to it that he didn't make it to work in SLC. This after being denied the jumpseat on mainline when trying to get to work and having to call out sick...strictly because of my non-pilot position, reciprocal agreement and CASS be damned. Why do I do it?...because I give half a crap about the brand and the understand the basic fact that the late/no-show pilot by any carrier operating under the Delta brand impacts not only your bottom line, but ours, too.
We respect you. How about a little respect our way? Like it or not...and until the last regional feeder closes up shop...when it comes to the brand, we're all in this together. So, chill with the rhetoric, get over yourself, and realize that the good people who bust their tails to make the brand look good very well deserve that little added priority.