Originally Posted by
shiznit
Should we fly money losing planes all over the world "just because we always have"?
Short answer: no, of course not.
Long answer: that depends. first of all we are faced with an inexcapable version of exactly that scenario at all levels of our flying in every theatre. The yield trashers/capacity dumpers are about to go bat dung crazy flooding markets and from EK to JB they are counting on DL to gift them capacity to keep our YoY profit growth up. It is a collision course with reality and we will either have to fight that battle or slowly go away.
The Delta network has been and will continue to change, and its been known for a long time that the 744's were probably next on the chopping block in the WB fleet(constantly talked about how much RA doesn't like 4 engines).
True, but the rub with this particular scenario was the panic chaotic urgency which it came about. Literally a coupld days after releasing bids based on keeping them, and hours before the bid closed, 1/4 of the fleet was suddenly parked. In the same breath they talk about growth in Asia.
Now, maybe we're parking 4 (soon all) 747's to replace all that lift with smaller planes like the 330. Fine, whatever. Less hourly pay but way more pilot jobs. But that doesn't seem to be the case because that's a lot of lift to be parked immediately, and only possibly replaced by future RFP's many years down the road. Those 330's that were supposed to be "growth" suddenly aren't anymore. What's next?
Are we shrinking to accomodate EK/etc growth? Making room for some failed pathetic government welfare case like Skymark by piling on our corporate charity at our pilots' expense? What's going on? Its a theatre poised for massive growth (much of it fake Keynesian growth that won't pan out, but there most certainlly is still growth potential there) or are we funding irrational competitors with capacity charity at our expense?
With all the "suddenly available" lift from the Atlantic seasonal pull down, how will that lift be replaced in time for the next upswing when we will only have a couple more 330's by then? Or do we plan on yielding that to our "partners" too? It seems like we could be getting set up for a huge in our face "grieve it, punk!" production balance where they just continue to gut the cure period evem more instead of actually curing anything, and then say "what are you going to do about it?" at the end and use it as leverage to baseline down whatever remedy they end up offering because hey, at least its something?
It is odd that they will pull 3 planes of flying in late Sept. but not displace until 2015. I'm sure there is a reason that we aren't seeing.
Displacing those positions would have a similar training waterfall effect as staffing them, at least for a while. Not to mention potential no freeze double bids, paid moves, etc.
The timing of this announcement, blatantly sugar coated on the front end with "good news" about first time captains and all that, just smells like a rat the more you sniff it. Something it up and this is only a small part of it.