Originally Posted by
Scoop
Sailing,
In general your post is correct with the exception highlighted in red. It was a huge "surprise" to 90% of the Pilot group.
Yes, mainline is slowly replacing the RJs and growing at LGA - this is great news. But do you honestly think most of us were not surprised with the 90% initial RJ rollout after our lobbying efforts?
And while I agree that we should all do our share and help out when able, this is the result of the perceived "bait and switch" on the initial LGA swap - many Pilots are now distrustful and a few will not participate in these programs any more.
In hindsight perhaps the company should have been a little more forthright about the initial RJ rollout. They have been pretty good about explaining it after the fact, but many feel we were initially mislead.
Scoop
90% of the pilots where surprised that regional service was going to be replaced with regional service? Even the
Cranky Flyer dude knew that it wasn't going to be all mainline. Pilots repost all these news blog stories here all the time and
everyone missed the fact that the aviation press was reporting the truth? I can't find a single article or press release saying there
will be jobs and flights out of this just that Delta will benefit and that there
may be a chance that we see more flying after they get done building the hub up with marketing and all that silly money making stuff.
Delta has been focused on “winning” New York, as we all know by now. This was going to let them serve more cities from New York than they do now, and they said it would also let them move some flights from JFK to LaGuardia in order to focus on the international hub operation at JFK. They were going to maintain flights to the markets which US Airways was leaving but they would use regional jets instead of turboprops.
Delta had to use the slots they got. The deal was delayed alot screwing up Deltas plan. Delta had plenty of regional jets doing nothing. Hindsight shows that the mainline flights are in fact coming. How long does it take to build a new mainline hub anyway? Did the pilots get screwed by delta or did we all make this into more than it was? No Haneda really means less Delta pilot jobs if I understand the issue correctly. This isn't a fool me once fool me twice thing.