Originally Posted by
Night Hawk 6
Just like "shrinking to profitability" is not a good business plan for the company, "surrendering to fight another day" has not worked well for the profession. Led by ALPA, pilots have been fed the line that "we will get them the next time" or "this is all we can get now" implying that somewhere down the road pilots will be able to regain what they give up today to have some peace. Well how well has this philosophy served the professional pilot since deregulation in 1978? If you take the salary of a Delta 727 captain in 1978 and adjust it to provide that same purchasing power today it will make you cry. The highest paid pilots today, wide body pilots, are at least 20 percent behind this narrow body Delta captain working 75 hours per month and the gap between those flying comparable aircraft today exceeds 50 percent, and that does not take into account the increased number of hours flown by pilots today. What is the justification for taking anything that is in any way concessionary? It is insanity to continue doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different results. Sad.
I agree with your assessment of "living to fight another day", and have at times gone back and shaken my head over the 1978 pay scales. What I strongly disagree with is your assessment that this deal is "concessionary". I'm assuming you don't believe what ALPA is telling you, because if you did, you would agree that it's richer than DAL starting in 2014, which coincides with the Scope changes allowing 76 seats (which I understand was a decision by the NMB when they bought the company's argument that they needed two years to "catch up" to DAL's costs because they were 2 years behind in the merger process. The NMB gave them 1). You don't need to believe ALPA... JP Morgan did an analysis stating that the contract was worth $400 million more than the present costs for next year... the year BEFORE we pass DAL. And that doesn't include $400 million in retro. I'm sorry, but that is not a concessionary deal. It's simple math. There may be some concessions contained in it for both pilot groups, but that is simple negotiations, ESPECIALLY when you are dealing with 4 party negotiations. Show me any contract in HISTORY that hasn't had some "gives" in it. That's just the reality of business. If you are holding out for a TA that has NO gives on EITHER side, well.... good luck with that.