Council 20 Update
August 1, 2014


B747-400 Permanent Fleet Reductions & the July 30th AE
The AE results for the latest posting were published on July 30th. While it was a positive AE result for the pilot group in many areas, it did not include the filling of 8 CA and 12 FO vacancies for the 747-400. More significantly, essentially concurrently with the results, a Flight Ops Memo from Sr. VP – Flight Ops, Capt. Steve Dickson, titled “AE Award and B747 Fleet Decision” was also published, which outlined the early retirement of four 747-400 aircraft from the fleet by October. See the memo and AE link on the Flight Ops page of DeltaNet; RHS under the “Headlines” header. Click here for the included short Q&A.

Background, Concerns, Considerations, and Requested Actions.
· The MEC was not notified about the 747-400 early retirements until the afternoon that the AE results were published (about 3 hours prior to publishing.) The MEC Office stated that they first received the 747 fleet information at approximately 3PM on Tuesday afternoon, July 29th (the day before the results were posted). We were also told that the DALPA Pilot Director (the ALPA member on the Delta BOD) did not have advance notice of these fleet changes.
· We (C20 Reps) believe that the MEC Office should have requested that the Company re-bid the AE. Apparently, based upon Contract Awareness Bulletin 14-03, published today around 1130ET, the MEC Administration chose not to follow that route. Click here for Contract Awareness Bulletin 14-03
· We are disappointed with not only the Co's choice to reduce the 747 fleet by 25% over the next 3 months (an accelerated retirement timeline compared to what was envisioned prior to Wednesday) but especially with their choice to make this decision after the AE bid deadline closed, and then to choose to not re-bid the AE or set it aside prior to publication. We believe this significantly disadvantaged the immediately affected pilots, both those on the 744 and those making bidding choices based upon not only the published vacancies but the previous 744 fleet plan.
· Note that all pilots will be affected by the eventual near term loss of these top pilot jobs. Capt. Dickson states in his memo that pilots will not be displaced in 2014 and that the Co is looking forward to “engaging in a discussion on mitigating displacements” with ALPA. While this effort, if successful, would certainly benefit those in 744 categories, as well as in the categories that 744 pilots could displace to, it would also benefit the Co by not further exacerbating their significant training capacity challenges on other fleets.
· According to today’s Contract Awareness Bulletin from the MEC Office, the MEC Leadership made the decision to not press for a re-bid because they believed that was in “the best interests of all Delta pilots”. The MEC was not consulted during the deliberation and thus far the other possible options, which were discussed, are being designated as confidential. The actions taken thus far have been done solely by the MEC Administration, without the input of the MEC.
· We believe that while this route may be more expedient, requiring a minority of pilots to shoulder an unfair burden is not the correct path. Airline history of certainly the past 20-25 years is replete with examples where a minority of pilots (and in some cases becoming the majority) have had to shoulder unfair burdens. While certainly we can disagree about what some of these examples are, the “B” scale, RJ outsourcing, and retirement benefits (all sides of that issue) are a few examples.
· We’ve received several calls, emails and texts from pilots who would've bid, and could've held, other categories had they know about this decision to begin to eviscerate the 744 fleet significantly ahead of schedule, and well before replacement aircraft are scheduled to be delivered. Many pilots not currently on the 744 chose not to bid other positions due to the potential about successfully bidding 744 categories in this or subsequent bids.
· Our (the MEC’s) initial notification from the MEC office, similar to the Flight Ops statement, chose to focus away from this significant fleet change (approximately 12% of Delta’s large widebody fleet over the next three months) by placing emphasis on the awards included in the AE, including first-time Captain awards, Captain awards, etc. While there was certainly good news, the decision to accelerate the retirement of four 744s, as well as what will be the ultimate loss* (current total staffing in the 744 categories as of this AE’s posting) of 224 top category CA jobs and 248 top category FO positions (most, if not all, who hold CA seniority on other aircraft) certainly blunts the positive news of the awards on other aircraft. *(Like any aircraft type, the 744s were ultimately scheduled to be retired at some point in the future; we believe that the choice to begin this process early portends negatively regarding the time the remaining 744s will be operated by Delta). We will likely be briefed about the future fleet plans at the upcoming August 11-14 MEC meeting, but suspect that information will be considered confidential.
· While the MEC is routinely briefed about Delta’s performance in its various markets, including the Pacific, and the MEC was briefed in general, nebulous, non-specific terms about a change in Delta’s Pacific strategy, those saying that the 744 fleet decision shouldn't be unexpected, especially much sooner than previously planned, after significant upgrades to the interiors among other recent 744 investment, and with no notice after an AE bid closed, either really don’t understand its significance or are trying to proactively reduce the negative morale implications to the pilot group. "Move along, move along, nothing to see here" while passing something disturbing seems like an appropriate rhetorical analogy.....
· Capt. Dickson’s mention of “engaging [with ALPA] in a discussion on mitigating displacements” also brings concerns about whether management will be proposing “relief” from the PWA or some other process that could be as problematic as the displacements themselves. We believe any “displacement mitigation” strategy proposal should be shared with the pilot group prior to being adopted (either by the MEC or by another process).
· Again, it is difficult to conceive that such significant fleet info could not be considered at the time of pilot bid submission. We collectively don’t recall this significant of fleet change info released after an AE / Advanced Position Entitlement bid window closed previous to this, including our experience while at multiple ALPA carriers. For some anecdotal perspective, note how even minor changes during the monthly PBS bidding correctly leads to re-bids and / or bid deadline extensions, and PBS bidding only affects pilots' next month's schedules; an AE bid has much longer term career-level effects.
· This whole exercise is especially disappointing considering that many pilots are late in their careers and there finally seemed to be some light at the end of the long discouraging tunnel of the past 10-15 years of prolonged periods of stagnation, decline, concessions, pension terminations and retirement losses, only to be suppressed once again by what seems to be the beginning of the down-sizing (or we can use the more prevalent euphemistic term over the past 15 years – “right-sizing”) of the wide body portion the airline. Implementing this change in direction in a manner preventing pilots from making the most timely career decisions with ALL AVAILABLE INFORMATION just exponentially amplifies what is already a discouraging decision.
· We sent emails to the MEC CH and administration yesterday requesting they approach management about a re-bid, including the points mentioned above, and to communicate to the pilot group about the overall situation.
· As previously mentioned, the MEC Office’s response to many pilots’ concerns is today’s Contract Awareness Bulletin 14-03. While noting that the 744 fleet changes are “unfortunate and on short notice” the Alert seems to focus on a narrow discussion about “PWA compliance” rather than choosing what we believe is the right thing to do: a “fully informed” re-bid of this AE, or even some other solution to remedy those pilots who would’ve bid differently had the fleet plan not changed so drastically during the five days from the AE bid closing date to the Award.

“Q’s” with no “A’s”
We’ve been asked several good questions over the past couple of days, for which we unfortunately don’t have answers. We’ll do our best to see if we can get some more info over the next couple weeks, including at the August MEC meeting. Of course, some of these answers will likely be confidential, and in a couple cases, likely unnecessarily so:
· What will be the retirement schedule for the rest of the 744s?
· Will the Virgin Atlantic JV using Virgin Atlantic flying be used to replace the capacity at any level in the Atlantic that will be reduced by reallocating Atlantic 763s and 330s to backfill the Pacific flying?
· Will there be staffing changes on the 330 and the 7ER categories to accommodate this reallocation of flying or will this be accomplished by rotation construction (and the opening of additional theaters for 7ER pilots)?
· Are these fleet decisions at this time at all attributable to pre-Section 6 negotiating posturing? Can we expect to see management use fleet plan concerns to “motivate” the pilot group to more readily accept their Section 6 objectives?
· Will the deliveries of the new widebody aircraft be accelerated? Will there be more widebody orders than already announced? Is the early 744 retirement connected to new or additional widebody acquisition plans?
· The usual merger questions (which never have answers until it’s obvious).
· What does management want ALPA to agree to relative to displacement mitigation?

All things considered, this AE / 744 fleet plan exercise has not been a great confidence building experience on many fronts as we begin the Section 6 negotiating process…….

Thanks for reading.

Fraternally,

Bill, Rich, and Tom