Originally Posted by
Bill Lumberg
Did you see what the Arab Spring did to all European airlines? How about the Eurozone crisis? How about Air France looking for 10,000 people to take voluntary cuts (the first step)? I don't think you are looking at the BIG PICTURE here George. Europe isn't doing very well, and in the meantime this TA could give us a 19.7% raise in 2 1/2 years, while adding 88 717s for our domestic growth, while parking 200 RJs (adding 70 larger), and giving us a favorable ratio going forward. That needs to be in your big picture.
Bill, against my own better judgement, I will attempt to answer your post.
- At issue is not whether or not there are cuts in Transatlantic JV flying to Europe. (there are)
- At issue is which pilot group is shouldering the majority of the Transatlantic JV flying cuts. (it's us, Delta pilots)
I've spoken about this very subject with Tim O'Malley. He is the guy who signed MOU16, the agreement that created the new compliance period from April 2011 to March 2014.
He is saying Delta has tried but can't get AFKLM to reduce flying more. As a result Delta is making the lion's share of the cuts and using the AFKLM network in Europe to cover the loss of direct Transatlantic service to some European cities. On our side of the Atlantic AFKLM/AZ have only cut 3-4 cities.
Anyone in JFK on the ER is pretty aware of this loss of destinations and even some guys in ATL have started to notice...
Delta has until March 2015 to fix this situation.
In the meantime we will shoulder our share of the cuts, add some of AFKLM/AZ's share of the cuts and like it.
An because we fly generally smaller jets, we will take a proportionally larger hit on block-hours.
That's the big picture...It's real and it is happening now.
Cheers
George