Hey...I resemble that remark!
I've always said I'd rather be lucky than good! I have found though, the harder I work, the luckier I get.
Ditto! Only I wasn't as lucky as you.........1988 for me.
1985 was a great time to be hired at Delta, no doubt, my first seniority number was 3879, but at that time in newhire class, the hot rumor was, they were only going to hire 200 of us, just to get them through the merger, with....
North West!
Then we were going to be furloughed.
The first furloughs didn't happen until 1993, after the Pan Am merger, (thanks to Mo'Ron) and we did finally merge with NW obviously, after Western and Pan Am, my number was above 5000 after those two mergers.
I don't know if the next 6 years will resemble the hiring spree of 1985-91, but we can hope!
I don't think it's going to mirror that time period where the company built up to 90 guys a month......but I do forsee the company hiring 50 a month or more for a longer period of time. It may take a year or two to build up to that just like it did from '85 but that's what my crystal ball foretells!
There are several things in our contract today, that didn't exist back then, that will mitigate their need to hire as many, and it certainly won't be a one for one replacement of the 3000+ pilots hired between 1985-1991, some of whom will be turning 65 in the next 5 years. You are stuck with me for another 10+, sorry.
No argument from me. But, with the merger, it's now A LOT more than 3000 hired in that time frame. Yeah, you and all them other rat bastids are stuck with me for just under 10 years!!
In 1985 we had a hard 75hr. cap, bow wave/spill back, trips dropped touching vacations, etc. The guys I flew engineer for used to brag about how much time off they had, not about how many hours they flew.
Now we have PBS, no cap on swaps, pilot to pilot pick ups, vacation bank, reserves can fly ALV+15, etc. All of those things are allowing guys to fly well over 100 mo. where in 1985, there was no monetary incentive to fly over 75, it would just go into your bow wave for next month.
I'd love to have the bow wave concept back.
Those items were all put in the contract for one reason, lower the required body count going forward. I'm guessing those items will save the company at least 20% body count, compared to what we needed under our 1985 contract, to fly the same block hours.
No argument from this part of the peanut gallery.