There’s something to be said for an small airline that was once the best in it’s class, bringing sleek new aircraft into a world of loud and slow prop planes. They offered the world at your feet in half the time and double the distance covering from the east coast to the west, north up to Canada and as far south as Mexico City. I for one, remember flights where announcements were spoken in French and English and today, meals served in a first class cabin.
Then in 1999, Delta Airlines saw the potential in this small but profitable airline that really, really could and offered then owner, David Mueller, $2,000,000. I can’t actually blame him and yet I wonder if he knew that the baby that he, his father and friends nurtured into something great would be torn apart a little at a time.
Slashing their fleet and thus the company that once employed around 7000 employees, claims were made that the once popular 50 seat CRJ’s that pioneered the speed and comfort of small passenger aircraft, were just too expensive to operate. With fuel charges and a declining economy, this is not at all disputed. The issues that some of the employees have is that while Delta told the regional pilots and flight attendant that they were costing too much, they agreed to pay their own pilots even more to fly the 117-seat Boeing 717s that Delta is leasing from Southwest Airlines. The question is, Could the 717s have as easily gone to Comair crews to fly instead?
