Thanks sailingfun, somehow I missed that CR blurb--thought I'd read all the verbage that came out with this AE and the Jan letter. That's marginally enough to keep my beaten-down hope alive as a wee ember.

Martin404, "backfill" means fill a position vacated when someone moves up.
The THEORY of seniority that this pyramid scheme all hangs on, is that the top senior guys will someday retire, and folks from below them will flow up into the senior spots. The ASSUMPTION we always made was that those lucky folks would leave their positions vacant, and that the company would BACKFILL those positions with other guys from below, who would leave open spots, which would be backfilled from below, etc.

When the airline keeps the same # of pilots, and guys retire off the top, the airline must hire the exact same # of new guys. It SHOULD result in everyone from top to bottom moving UP, increasing their Quality of Life, and the bottom-rung water-boys get to move up and have their heinous lot in life filled by NEW GUYS.

That's NOT what we're seeing at Delta however. Despite all the hoopla on "we're hiring!!" and "Big retirements coming soon!", the fact of the numbers is this: As guys retire out the top, OR as new pilot positions are created by Delta acquiring new jets, we are NOT "backfilling" those positions with an equal number of new guys. In fact, we are actually shrinking the airline by just not backfilling the top spots that empty out, currently at the 7ER f/o positions. The ILLUSION is being marketed that we're all moving up and things are improving... but the diligent tracking of the numbers shows that in fact the bottom of the list is not moving at all, as we shrink the 7ER category faster than new planes arrive, and thus shrink the pilot list faster than retirements are happening. Even the hiring succumbs to this illusion--we're hiring yes, but we're hiring LESS than the growth in aircraft would indicate we should... because what's really happening is we are shrinking the middle of the list faster than we're hiring to replace it.

So, say we retire 100 pilots and gain aircraft that should generate 200 pilot slots, that's 300 new pilots that should be needed to keep everyone stable without movement up or down. But we're hiring 80 (in this example, whose numbers are made up to illustrate the point for you). So, we get told this rosy-looking sunshine marketing hooplah: "Hey! We're finally hiring, new guys coming in below you, will push you up!" "Hey, new jets coming on board, we're gonna grow!" "Hey, guys are retiring, good days ahead!". But the truth is that all these are half-truth illusions that mask the REAL truth: we're shrinking faster than any of those growths, and we're doing it by more efficiencies. Delta desires to have fewer total pilots doing the same work, and we're getting there AE by AE. The truth of this shrinking is being well masked by the company and parroted by our union analysts. We are in essence just like the shopper that pays double for something because it was MARKED at triple price, then a salesman tells us, "30% off sale! Smoking deal for you!" and we "hyuck hyuck, garsh I'll take two of them!".
;O