When I was working in the corporate airplane world I was told to always get 3 bids on anything whether it was painting the hangar floor or getting a rental car or a hotel in Vegas. It was a lot of work but it was a good idea.
So think about it this way, Delta gets 3 bids now to transport the passengers that bought tickets on their website:
1. If it's international passengers, they can chose between Delta mainline and a JV or Skyteam partner.
- If they select Delta, they get 3 bids from fleet types to do it: 747/777, 330/764 or 763. Chose the least expensive smallest capacity option that you can get away with, because the pilots are cheaper.
2. If it's a domestic flight, they can chose between Delta mainline, a regional carrier or codeshare partner called Alaska.
- If you're going to use Delta mainline, try to use the lowest paying aircraft possible of the MD88/90, 320, 737 or 757. Use the 757 as a last resort, those guys cost the same as the 767 pilots, but soon we'll replace the 757s with 737s and the economics will be soooo much better.
- If using a regional, make sure you chose from the cheapest of Pinnacle, Coma..., Pinnacle, GoJet, Skywest, ASA or RAH. Always use the cheapest one. Drives the others to drop their costs to below costs.
- If using Alaska, enjoy.
So whipsaw all of those against each other except for the JV and codeshare partners, pay them as is.
Now I know you might be thinking, seriously pilot pay per hour is not the only driving factor. There are so many other things to take into account such as aircraft performance, aircraft cost, capacity, cargo capacity, maintenance cost, fuel cost, etc.
But you're just so so wrong.
When many of us on here advocated bringing RJs in-house the push back from within our house was that our pay was too high per hour and that's all that mattered. When we pointed out such things as ending overlapping management costs, economies of scale, quality control, liability costs, etc, we were told we were so wrong. All that matters is the per hour pilot rate. So I'm going to just go with the DALPA flow, all that matters is the per hour pay of the pilots.