Originally Posted by
gloopy
While I agree with that, I can't possibly see this issue being worth anywhere remotely closet to 2500 pilot positions. Maybe a tenth that, if that. Summer 30 day months alone was a much bigger concession than that would be. But if we are entertaining it (or any other manning concession) the payoff should be net manning positive or no deal. Like 5 hours a day vaca (pay and credit) and an extra week if we still come up short.
In any case though, the fact that this rumor is getting so much traction is symptomatic of a well run FUD play by management and their Ford and Harrison line coaches. The REAL manning issue here is SCOPE, and by comparison look how little people are talking about that.
We have HUGE deficiencies in our international JV's and a flat out contractual violation by the company despite a massive, earth shattering pro-company language of a 3 year blank check downside followed by another year long flagrantly ignored "cure period". While the Alaska code share abuse is in remission, it is only because the actions of the Alaska CEO, and it could come back at ANY time and then some. We have some of our existing regionals with firm orders for 100ish seaters and when asked who they will fly them for they say don't worry when they get here we will have agreements.
The emotional issues (pro and con) of a few dozen guys getting paid to sit at home or do a full month for triple pay is a drop in the ocean compared to the scope issues we're facing which are getting almost zero attention.
^^^ THIS ^^^
Don't forget how we got played in the Virgin Atlantic deal…
While the concept of global production balance
in general is sound, our timing and how it is implemented in the Virgin JV couldn't have been worse. Ever since we've signed that LOA, Virgin has pulled out of non-US international markets and redeployed that capacity on flights to the US.
Network changes | Virgin Atlantic
Had we signed a simple production balance for the Transatlantic, Delta would have been forced to match the Virgin US-flying increases or at least balance the flying by adding many more flights on the Delta side of the Virgin JV.
So while Virgin significantly increased flying to the US, our agreement with a
global production balance conveniently required no growth on DAL flying. In fact Virgin could exclusively shift all flying to exclusively US routes and our Virgin JV LOA wouldn't require any increase of Delta flying at all.
The bottom line, unless we get a
global production balance for all JV and codeshare flying and the company actually honors the contract it signed we will once again find ourselves one step behind.
The Mideast carriers are getting all the attention for the
potential flying they could take over "our routes" while our
existing agreements are being ignored for years and flying is going to the "other" guys because we didn't pay attention…
Capacity constraint is nice and good and has provided huge financial benefits to Delta but its time the European partners shoulder some of the capacity reductions instead of Delta pilots...
Cheers
George