Originally Posted by
slowplay
One of the advantages of working for a large union is that your E&FA department gets to look at 37 different airlines and their internal numbers. While they are bound by confidentiality agreements they can quickly tell which carriers are out of the norm. ALPA also has copies of all the DCI (and many other regionals)ASA agreements and can match the numbers from the agreements with data provided by management. Lastly, most of the regionals are publicly traded companies (Trans States excepted) and have SEC reporting requirements. Those are yet another crosscheck.
In all honesty ALPA doesn't rely just on management's numbers.
It is good that the non-disclosure / confidentiality agreements that all the airlines have with all the ALPA carriers allows them to freely share that info among competing carriers. Is this why South West still has such great scope, because they are not privy to these shared confidentiality number?
I am surprised that United/Continental looked at those same numbers and decided to pursue 100% scope though. I know you will say look how well they are doing but they are not very happy with us right now because we are cutting the legs out from under them. Perhaps we are using USAPA's numbers in our computations
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The numbers being quoted by FTB are from the Form 41 data which you say you use as a crosscheck. I will grant that the numbers presented are not correct due to the fact that many of the cost are hidden by reimbursement cost as well as the fact that Delta directly covers the cost of most of the handling and servicing of the aircraft and passengers. Delta also pays a operating margin to the DCI carriers which is very hard to quantify into hourly cost of the outsourced aircraft.
The direct cost of the Pilot, FAs, and mechanics are the only true savings and there is money to be had in the scale of operation at Delta as well as the in operating margins paid to the DCI carriers. It will cost Delta more money but it's not an unthinkable or impossible amount.