Originally Posted by Zoomie

My honest opinion:

Especially as a low time FO...

You will regret this decision. You might get a quick bump of a few hundred numbers initially, but the after affects of giving up this scope will last the rest of your career. This might get you off reserve, but after a year or two and all the 717s are on property, you will stagnate and the only movement you will have will be due to retirements. Maybe there will be enough retirements so that you won't really notice and you'll slowly move up the chain of the seniority list, but if DL held the line on RJ scope, I predict you'd go up even faster.

I also can't believe that you really believe the math that you just put down on this message board. Ask a financial planner how much your "buying power" is really going up with this contract. I can tell you with 100% surety that you're buying power isn't going up by 30%, so you're kidding yourself thinking this is a 30% raise.

How's you're math doing keeping up with inflation? The DL MEC likes to tout a 20% cumultative raise, and selectively picks the economic principles it chooses to sell this TA to you.

They reiterate the time value of money when they released this TA, but they didn't mention anything about the affects of inflation on this TA. You're pay raises in this contract regarding pay rates are an 8.5% pay raise at best. The 4% bump on Jul 1st and the 3% raises in 2014 and 2015 will just keep you on the bar for inflation.

Why no mention of inflation? Does that not apply to pilots?

If the company offered you a contract that was 3% every year for 20 years, would you call that a 60% raise? I can guarantee you that management would sign that "60% raise" tomorrow.

If you pass this TA, DL will have moved the bar down on scope once again and keep giving it away. You see how long its taking CAL/UAL to negotiate a contract trying to put that genie back in the bottle? It's almost impossible. The least DL could have done is hold the line on 70 seaters and let them die out.

The reality is that this scope will most likely delay your upgrade to CA by a few years. That is because DL has now set the precedent for a non-bankruptcy contract. That precedent will now be, give up scope and profit sharing, get a raise. DL management sold the "zero sum" game to the DL NC hook line and sinker and they swallowed it whole. Now upgrade to CA would be a real 30-50% raise based on what airline you're at.

You think that next contract you won't give up more 76 seaters? Why not? You did on this one. Maybe next contract it will be 90 seaters. Maybe they'll give you another 10% pay raise.

RJ flying already accounts for > 50 % domestic flying. They're already doing international and these 76 seaters have even longer range than the 70 seaters, especially since their really 90 seaters configured to 76 seats.

What happens when the company says "We'd like to make another order for widebody aircraft and some more LNB aircraft, but we're not going to do it unless you give us another 100 76 seaters, and let us configure 70 of them to 90 seats.

Will you take this bait as well? What is you're line in the sand?