Originally Posted by
tsquare
The 747/777/330/765 make up 12% of the fleet.. period. Management's decision to buy those airplanes, or NOT buy those airplanes, which they aren't... and you have been here long enough to know that they ain't gonna buy any more 747s. What airplane has management bought lately? 737-900. A replacement to the 757 and 767. Will it pay as much as the aircraft they are replacing? I'll let you decide for yourself on that one. Personally, I doubt it.. So we.. once again.. take pay cut based on a management decision. Why do we handcuff ourselves to that contract after contract? I would prefer longevity based pay based on how long you have been here, but that is too hard a sell, so I concede to banding because it gives some guys a little comfort with the whole productivity thing.. (that is a myth, because yet again.. WE do not buy airplanes, management does.) Oh, I would leave the 757 in the widebody band, but since they are going away, it really wouldn't matter...
What I would LOVE is for somebody to convince me that productivity is a valid reason for staying away from banded pay. However, that logic cannot say anything about faster more people more cargo, because as I said before, management makes the purchasing decisions. It would be up to us to make us expensive enough so that they would want economy of scale. Bottom line for me is.. I push throttles. Pay me for doing so. While I love the 76, I don't really care what the airplane is as long as I am getting paid to fly it.
RA has commented on the four engine jets many times throughout the last decade, but keep in mind; The 748i is 20% more efficient than the 744. If DAL knows they can fill it, it makes sense to buy a handful of them. It just depends on where they want the airline to go. If they opt to operate an airline the 773 and the 748 could have their place. The 789 will also be a major player in our fleet going forward for those point to point routes in Asia, and the ME.
The 748i would be good on ATL-ICN (good enough for a 380), ATL-DXB, ATL-CAI, NYC-TLV, DTW-HKG, DTW-ICN, LAX-ICN, ATL-NRT, LAX-NRT, ATL-JNB etc. Anywhere we need a lot of cargo lift it makes sense. Frequency can solve that, but we lack lift and frequency in to a lot of markets.