Lockout
Have you all ever considered that management's intention may really be to cause the pilots to strike, or more likely that a pilot strike has been determined to be an acceptable way to further managment's long term interests? If the company and union are allowed to go to self-help, a lockout would be a natural response by management either in advance of or in quick response to a strike by the union.
JA and the rest of Skywest management hate unions and a lockout would be a path to breaking the ALPA shop. He might be able to hire enough scabs (young guys and gals oblivious to the implications) to restart operations within a few months, but more likely he would just transfer the assest including the aircraft and ATL gates to Skywest and very quickly get back to business.
Do you think it is an accident that there are now 5 DCI carriers in ATL? The way routes are shifted routinely between all the players, it would be very hard to define what was struck work, especially into the second month of a lockout. Do you think the Skywest pilots' in-house lap dog of a union is organized enough to refuse struck work, if they can even figure out what is and is not struck work? Are they going to refuse to fly ASA's airplanes after a lockout? How about the rest of DCI? The various flavors of Republic guys might try and I'm expect that COMAIR's MEC would do their best, but after the duration of the published schedule it would be impossible for those even with the best of intentions to say what is struck work.
Delta would suffer some serious pain for 6-8 weeks and it would be another couple of months before it was all back together, but JA would get his union free shop and he and Delta would send a powerful message to all of their workers about their version of the new world order.
I'm not trying to scare anybody off a strike vote. I'm mostly a spectator here. ASA pilots have a crap contract and the negotiations have been dragged on for too long. But my guess is that management might move towards self-help on its own, regardless your strike vote, if the negotiations continue to stalemate. It may not be the best end state for management, but Jerry and his boys are playing for the long haul and the cost of a lockout may well be worth it.
Willy