I was thinking about that very point this morning. I was asking myself whether my opposition to productivity concessions (vacation sellbacks, pay-banding, OOBS, 1.5>80, etc.) puts me, relative to the average pilot. Is there really such a huge demand for concessions, that we have to voluntarily put them on the table in this survey?

But I don't see how that can be possible, considering where we are in our career. First of all, I think the average age of the Delta pilot is in the low fifties. So most of us will have to live with the consequences of what we do now. Second, the upper half of the list has been starved for advancement. It took years to work off the merger surplus, but it's finally been done of the FO side, and we're getting NB upgrade opportunities. Not so much for the Captains, who haven't yet benefited from retirements in any meaningful way. They need to see benefits, because they're slowly working their way to 65. That clock is ticking. The time they have to benefit is finite. Any productivity setback, especially a combination of setbacks, each costing a hundred pilots, or a couple of pilots, is deadly to a NB guy that's been waiting and waiting for an upgrade.

Of course, it works the same throughout the list, as these concessions would hit all categories in similar proportions, and so the bottom of the food chain will be affected. It doesn't feel like it right now, because we're hiring aggressively. But that can change in an instant, can't it?

A nice early deal, a few innocuous concessions (the impact of which wouldn't be obvious until afterwards), and RA can give us a nice pay bump, call it a victory, and retire. It would take a few AE's where nothing happens, a memo or two about suspending hiring, before it dawned on us that we have screwed ourselves.

So no, I don't think I'm alone, and you're not alone: we cannot afford to give more productivity increases.