Originally Posted by
gloopy
Has anyone cyphered the total number of additional required staffing, if any, for DL WRT to the new rules?
The rules will be what they will be, but there are 2 different possibilities: keeping the current contractual 2/3/4 man block hour limits versus sliding that grid one hour forward WRT the FT/DT changes.
I really don't see much of an advantage to the company to push deeper into Europe, etc with the extra hour of 2 man ops if the no exceptions "must be legal at throttle up" concept remains part of the final rules. I do see the company pushing for relief for narrowbody ops though, particularly high cycle hub flying i.e. 717/88/320/etc. If a crew starts to overblock they can always replace them at a hub with minimal risk to the operation. Trying to get 8:01-8:59 2 man to Europe or back with varying headwinds (giggity), etc and a taxi out delay of as little as 1 minute up to 59 minutes would mean a messy cancellation/gate return and the real world would quickly outstrip the fancy spreadsheet benefits on paper.
Unless they overblocked to protect against that. But if they did that, they would eliminate the efficiencies they were trying to gain in the first place.
I assume the company will approach us for this, and I assume we will seriously consider giving them that concession. We will of course want "something" for it, but IMO since there is no way they will offer anything of equal or greater value (otherwise they gain nothing) we would be selling some degree of safety, even if its small, in exchange for something else. I hope we don't go down that road. Honestly, I hope the company doesn't even ask.
The new rule is going to have a lot of different effects on various parts of our contract. Some will favor us and some will favor the company. Some pilots will like a specific change and other pilots will hate it. Not much new there.
The company will be able to eliminate the current practice of double crewing some turns mostly Caribbean in some markets. That costs us jobs and reduces credit time, both benefits to the company. How much they can do that depends on the risk they are willing to take since the 9 hours is a hard number. Schedule a turn for 8 40 and have the crew go 20 minutes over on the outbound leg and they can't return. The company will then have to bring the aircraft back to Miami or somewhere else and attempt to recrew the flight or cancel the return. The ability to fly up to 9 hours on a normal domestic rotation will also have to have a buffer applied. The company will look at the data and decide what they are comfortable with. Getting a reserve crew to the aircraft in time to keep the operation on schedule if a crew goes over on a leg is not as easy as some think. I suspect they may continue to schedule to 8 hours and use a 1 hour buffer. I can't see them going under a 30 minute buffer and that will be tight.
On the international side the contract still required a augmented crew on any ocean crossing over 8 hours. The main effect of the new rule will probably be seeing the company putting a relief pilot on some current 2 man operations to protect the operation because of the hard limits. It also would ease assigning reserves to a trip. This is good for the pilots.
As far as manning there are so many aspects to the new rule that the actual effects are hard to predict. I think its going to take the company a year or two to get a handle on it. The company does not at this point plan in engaging the union in talks to modify the contract to the new FAR. They intend to operate under the current contract. They have felt that past mid contract talks have heavily favored the union in actual costs and they will take any hits the new rule creates.
I do find one forum aspect interesting. The forum represents itself as trying to understand various aspects of the contract, company, faa and how in the end they effect our jobs. The reality is however the forum refuses to acknowledge anything if they can't cast blame on someone for whatever they are discussing. The classic example of this is manning. Probably thousands of posts about how various company and union changes will effect manning but no one wants to discuss the real 800 lb gorilla.
The company is running a dramatically better airline. I recently had a interesting discussion on pilot hiring and other issues with someone reasonable in the know at the company. Reserve utilization is way down during normal ops and way down during Irops. Running a good airline causes a substantial reduction in pilot needs. I just flew a 4 day domestic trip that started with 3 minutes of credit. We ended the trip with 3 minutes of credit and flew every leg as scheduled. In the past there would have been numerous times we made money on a leg waiting for a gate ect.. We would have more then likely been rerouted once or twice or even 3 times. Reroutes generate huge amounts of credit and premium pay. They have been cut well over 50 percent. The company is even surprised at how large the reduction in total credit hours as been. That is one of the reason you see the current push on gate latency. They like what they are seeing and want more of it. Tie this into the new FAR's with hard limits and it becomes even more important to the company to run a good airline. 4 years ago the new rule would without a doubt have required a lot more pilots at Delta. With the operation we are running today the hard limits will have a much smaller impact and a greatly reduced need for additional pilots.
This forum does not discuss the effect running a good airline has on pilot needs for one simple reason. This is a forum about blame. Hard to blame the company or union for running a good airline so nothing to talk about! It is however at the moment a major factor in decisions on pilot hiring and the effect is far greater then any change in the contract or FAR's.