That is so funny, I also fly with many Captains that talk about how long it took them to upgrade and how they had to wait.... I patiently listen then ask how long it took them to make Captain. Most say 12 or 13 years some less. They are really surprised that I have been at Delta for 12 years and and have at least another 9 years to crack in to the top 50% of the the seniority list assuming we stay at 12000ish pilot. No point here really except holy crap how did I screw my career up so badly.

To bad we could not have a huge APC office pool and all pick a month when we will start hiring. Let see with 392 retirements between now and 2016 ... I guess I will go with interviews in fall of 2015 and first class on Feb 10 2016. Of course that assumes we replace the 392 pilots that retire. If we are going for the 9000 pilot airline I want a second pick and I will go with fall of 2017 interviews with a 7 Feb 2018 class start date.

You all should be careful I was only 24 days off on my office pool for Delta furlough recall and everybody thought I was crazy for guessing 5 years 3 months.

Yes, yes Sailing, I know we are going to have more block hours and all but according to a LEC rep who now says we are a 1000 pilots fat and Ed Bastians comments (see below) it appears that they intend to man the airline with the efficiency's gained in the contract. (that was my bad, I voted yes because truthfully I guess I did not fully comprehend the efficiency's that were gained. With letters from SD say possible hiring in fall of 2012 and the union saying 3000 new hires and such... I took hook line and sinker. Once again my bad.)

Ed Bastian - President

Well, there is lot of moving pieces in that because there was a significant amount of productivity overtime in that contract that helps us manage the seasonality peak that I was talking about. So that inflow plus there is a lot of benefit from the contract in the form of these 76-seats swaps and been able to increase the 76-seat count and return for getting 60-seaters out. So there is lot of pieces that move in and out of the economics of that transaction, but with that said, once we get to 65 we will have a significant number of retirements and we don't anticipate being in a situation where we have pilot hiring in 2013 as we sit today, but obviously as people hit the 65 age limitation, we will be hiring at the bottom of the seniority list. We haven't done an analysis of what the trade off is there, but overall the pilot contract and when you take the totality of all the terms, the productivity, the scope clause and the flexibility that gives us to be able to manage the business to the peak, its all in a good yield in terms of the overall profitability of the airline.