Not Hacker, but scope is THE most important section of a contract (it's section #1 for a reason). It's the section that lays out what flying MUST be done by company pilots and what can be farmed out to regional/joint venture carriers. Without it, or with crappy scope, the company can farm out the flying to whomever they wish. On one end of the scope spectrum you have SWA, who has pretty solid scope. From my understanding, EVERY passenger who buys a southwest ticket is flown by Southwest pilots. However, a person who buys a Delta ticket to say Copenhagen (I just ran a orbitz search) could end up flying on one of our regional carriers to ORD then Air France to CPH. A ticket sold by Delta and not once are they being flown by a Delta pilot. All the carriers (except SWA), have some form of give on scope, some more than others. For the big-3, selling top end scope means fewer WB pilots, thus fewer of the highest paying jobs, and fewer pilots in general. If/when you get to an airline and the union starts talking about selling scope for pay rates...be VERY weary. Doing so can mean stagnation in your current seat or even maybe never seeing the left seat of that WB.