Thank you for your reasoned response and even Puff Driver is explaining his positions better. I appreciate it.
I have been explaining it the same way since time began. You just will not accept it. You accept your viewpoint as the only one which could possibly result in a unified ALPA, and that is incorrect. Additionally, you make broad, sweeping generalizations, accept them as givens, and declare omnipotence. Also incorrect..such as your assertion that has the PID been accepted, no furloughs from the current Delta list would have resulted.
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.
..and you were COMPLETELY reliant on feeding Delta for your livlihood nonetheless. Lose Delta as your sole customer, and ASA disappears..at least how you envision it. You act as if your company was a stand alone, go it alone, entity. Incorrect. Without Delta, you were a niche carrier, and severely career limited.
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."
So you decided to bring this tired old line of reasoning out again. First, where you volunteer your time has nothing to do with the issue at hand. It is just an egoistic, emotional ploy that serves only to purposefully distract from relevant discussion. I guess I should be at least thankful that you didn't mention the napkins. While marketing, paint jobs, napkins, bottled water do and should present a unified appearance to the Delta customer, they come nowhere close to MY definition, nor the Delta PWA definition, nor the Comair contractual definition, nor the ASA contractual definition of operational integration. That definition was based on seating, thus showing a reasonable comparison of the type of aircraft, operations, customer base, and advancement of two merger partners. It was legal, and binding, via all parties and their CBAs. Indisputable. Then, two MECs, led by certain egoistic types, decided that there might be a windfall potential out there. The rest is history.
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.
Whatever, if any, misguided opinion that Cpt. Giambusso has of our affiliate pilots, there is no proof of existence of such opinion other than a he said she said, and the same can be said of a certain J.C. Lawson on behalf of the Comair pilots. Using phrases such as "the Delta pilots "seemed" is simply rhetoric. There are plenty of Delta pilots, this one included, that know the value of a qualified 121 crewmember..and still opposed it for valid reasons.
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.
There was no threat, the Delta, Comair, and ASA CBAs were simply provided..revealing the ashtonishing fact that none of them required a merger of the pilot lists.
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.
No new precedents here. Two APA carriers existed while being owned by the same entity. Precedent was already out of the bag. Furthermore, both of those carriers had far more integration than Delta, Comair, and ASA combined times three. Even if the Delta pilots had wanted it, there were all indications that it would be impossible to achieve given the company's adamant stance to keep them seperate. Valuable time and resources would have been squandered to pursue the pipe dream of 2 misguided, opportunistic MECs. An ego trip, a seniority grab.
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.
.......which would have come anyway You can't have it both ways. You like to argue the above, meaning that Comair and ASAs junior would have been furloughed--thus misrepresentation on the part of their MECs. In reality, there was going to be a seniority grab, meaning that Comair and ASA pilots were looking to reap the benefits without risking the downside. All of this under the guise of inclusive scope, brotherhood, onealpa, etc, etc. We've hashed this countless times, and logic has ou folling short every time. Indeed, numerous Delta, former ASA, pilots have been quoted as being told by a certain individual that they were fools for taking jobs at Delta as they would soon be junior to current ASA pilots whom they were now senior to. Oh yes, the true writing of the reasoning behind the PID is there. You just have to peel away the layers of BS.
But I ask you, what airline did Ransome's ATR pilots and Folker's F27 guys retire from?
All COMPANY decisions to integrate the companies.
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.
The ASA aquisition was in no way ground breaking. AMR owned and still today operates all of its affiliates with no integration at mainline. Yes, I know that there is an APA/ALPA thing, but initially there were three carriers represented by APA after the purchases. This is anything BUT virgin territory. Incidentally, I would imagine that had a 737-200 been available, they would have dispatched it instead. I do not see how this proves operational integration, except in your head. That is, unless it was a Delta dispatcher, using Delta's automated software for weight and balance--all of which require the approval of the FAA, and Delta flight attendants from the broken 737 staffed the ATR--which requires the approval of the FAA, and you went under the call sign of Delta--thus showing that you are complying with all of Delta's mtx requirements, pilot requirements, policies and procedures, all of which require the approval of the FAA, and so on, and so on, and so on.......................
That is how I see it and those are objective facts about how it went down.
Make no mistakes, none of them are "objective facts", as proven--except maybe that you flew from Atlanta to GSP. I have chartered from SFO to ORD last minute to cover a broken United plane--doesn't make me a United pilot, or Delta and United operationally integrated.
I do notice, however, time and time again that none of you mention the flow-through offering, which could have been industry leading, which actually could have been supported by the company as well, which could have addressed all of your MECs concerns, nor the lack of any PID between Comair and ASA or ASA and Skywest. Cloudy water? Only if you are not wearing a mask, so that you may see properly all around you.
Edit: I had more but we are in severe thread creep so I deleted some
