Originally Posted by
FIIGMO
FTB,
All due respect, but can you once again clearly explain to me how we sold scope? Scope was improved at the DCI level... Shoulda or woulda, " we can make mgt do this or that"were not options to vote on...Voting no was the only option and dealing with HUGE unknowns..... I have a lot of heart burn about the last contract... But DCI scope was not one of them... IMHO we tightened a lot of the DCI scope up... an rj is an rj.... 50 76 seats does not matter they were here they could have had more!!! Less DCI aircraft with less DCI pilots flying less Delta passengers....
FIIG
An RJ is not an RJ. Let me let EB explain it...
No, because actually, we’ll be mindful of our frequency by market and that’s a key driver, and the 717 deal, particularly, gives us much better gauge and the second thing is, I don’t think customers want to fly 800, 900 miles on a 50-seater. Part of what we’re doing here is putting a better product in the market, better fuel efficiency, fewer airplanes in the air and our customers tell us they much prefer flying on mainline airplanes rather than 34-, 44-, and 50-seat airplanes.
A 34-50 seat airplane is a 34-50 seat airplane, everything else is a mainline jet and it's not semantics. 70 seat and up have first, economy comfort and economy. So they rightfully refer to them as mainline jets and we allow them to have 325 of those jumbo RJs which is a fleet equivalent to all our MD88s, MD90s, 717s and A319s combined.
An RJ is not an RJ. If you hold DCI to 50-seats only and the 50-seater is a lesser product in the market, less fuel efficiency and requires more airplanes in the air and on the gates to meet capacity then you'd be in better position to keep flying at mainline.
Allowing more 2-class RJs to be outsourced does not. And that's what we did...
We increased the cap on 50+ seat aircraft from 255 to 325 and allowed more 76-seaters than was previously allowed under the old PWA given mainlines size because we dropped a fleet size requirement for a BH ratio that didn't require flying to be transferred. Just for DCI to shrink the jets EB refereed to as a lesser product, inefficient and takes up space.
What did we get? A pay increase funded by profit reduction and more pilot productivity (i.e. fewer pilots required) and 717s that the company was already going to get.
But DCI shrunk right? And that's all that matters. But note the part where EB says parking 50-seaters is "fewer airplanes in the air" and that's a good thing. Seems to me they really didn't want 343 50-seaters running around in the first place. Shrinkage was what they wanted and we obliged to throw them in the briar patch.
So Fig, that's why I see it as selling scope.