Originally Posted by
readywhenyouare
Pilots and flight attendants is where Delta could have a huge opportunity to see labor savings. If a bankruptcy court throws out the pilot contract there would be nothing stopping Delta from bidding out all of the flying. For example, giving Skywest a contract to operate the 737 fleet, Endeavor the A320 fleet, Republic the 757/767 fleet, etc. This would result in significant cost savings and give Delta a huge advantage over their competitors. And it's not without precedence. Lufthansa has done that with with Eurowings. KLM with Martinair. Air France has done this with the A340 using CityJet and Joon to operate them. And then BA/Iberia with LEVEL.
There is a lot wrong with this paragraph. A BK court does not "throw out" labor contracts, if by that you mean they just disappear at the request of the debtor. The parties must still negotiate. While being in Ch. 11 certainly gives an employer more leverage, changes can only be implemented with court approval after the debtor follows a process laid out in the Bankruptcy Code. Further, the proposed modifications must be necessary to permit reorganization and must treat the union and employees fairly and equitably.
A scope clause would almost certainly survive this process (though possibly with some modifications), so your dream of DL contracting with other carriers to fly the entire mainline fleets almost certainly wouldn't happen. It is telling that the "precedents" you cite are all outside the U.S. European labor law is significantly different. Under *U.S.* labor law, this outcome would be a practical impossibility. (If it could, why hasn't it, given all the previous U.S. airline BKs?)