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Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2001
- Posts
- 6,137
Thank you for your reasoned response and even Puff Driver is explaining his positions better. I appreciate it.The thing is the flying that you are losing never belonged to you, contractually or otherwise. Does it suck, yes.
Here is how I see it, and it's just my humble opinion, but here goes. Your destiny, or rather your lack of control over your destiny, was sealed the day you went to work for an airline that is not really an airline. ASA is simply a contractor to Delta who provides a service for a price. No different from the companies that provide catering or fuel servicing. ASA does not fly its own code, ASA does not have its own marketing or ticketing. And ASA does not decide when or where it flies. Simply put, ASA is an airline in name only.
ALPA can do a lot of things. There are some things ALPA cannot do. And ALPA cannot change the fact that not only do you not control the flying you perform, the company you work for does not control the flying it performs.
When I hired in to ASA, we had our own ticketing, marketing, finance, IT, and controlled our own routes. When CHA gave our crews a hard time, our VP of Flight Operations made the phone call threatening to pull out and he had the power to make that decision. I recieved and used positive space ASA tickets for my perfect attendence.
What changed is that Delta acquired our little airline and operationally integrated the ticketing, marketing and all other functions into Delta. Just like NorthEast, Western and part of Pan Am was acquired. In fact, at the Delta Heritage Museum where I have volunteered the history of my little airline ends with "ASA was merged with Delta."
Chuck Giambusso was having none of it. Delta was (and is) one of the most coveted jobs in passenger aviation and this job was considered reserved for military pilots first. Mr. Giambusso as DL MEC Chairman told the ASA MEC Chair frankly that Military pilots would not start their careers at Delta flying RJ's. He then smeared ASA pilots as drunk, uneducated, misfits. The Delta pilots seemed to believe this and were always surprised when they learned I had an advanced degree, some post graduate work and that no one I knew at ASA had a DUI, or was a drop out.
So under threat of withdrawing the Delta pilots from ALPA, the Board of Directors considered the threat of an American sized defection and chose to keep the peace. This was not democracy, it was nuclear diplomacy.
A new precedent was made; acquired airlines could be operationally integrated without a merger. The starter's pistol was fired on the race to create alter ego operations within holding companies so any of us can be replaced and none of us has a secure job.
I will not recap all the harm that came to the junior Delta pilots as a result of Giambusso's decisions. However, not a single pilot should have been furloughed and Delta has way too many inefficient 50 seaters and way too few 100 seaters. Everyone seems to be in agreement on these points.
But I ask you, what airline did Ransome's ATR pilots and Folker's F27 guys retire from? The ASA acquisition was a pivotal change in our profession. I have my old ASA ticket stock and, believe it or not, a dispatch release listing me in command of a Delta flight number from ATL to GSP which I operated to cover a broken 737-200 section with an ATR72. The water in those days was pretty muddy.
That is how I see it and those are objective facts about how it went down.
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