Only a small population may currently benefit but it is or will be available to all FOs very soon. The way we are hiring every FO on property will be able to bid into an FO position and hold the seniority needed to bid with LCA within 2-3 years.

Most FOs don't even bother to try to bid with LCA for various reasons but the benefit will be available to all currently on property shortly.

You call it featherbedding and you can make an argument for that, but we negotiated for it and in my opinion gave it away far too cheaply.

Didn't we just negotiate to improve the 23k recovery or something similar by conceding a seat lock for new hires? Did the seat lock go away with the IOE trip drop? No it was increased to two years.

What good are our contracts when every time something becomes limiting or impacting we just redraw the line? I am talking about:

Scope - every time the limits kick in we acquiesce.
JV compliance - Company out of compliance - Create a new baseline.
IOE drops - Well now that it has impact - eliminate it.

Profit sharing - Great formula - lets water it down so management can manipulate it.

And also sick leave and a few others.

Finally think about the A350 pay rates matching the 777 rates. If we continue along the current practice of negotiating away numerous benefits on the next contract I could easily see the following scenario:

Delta: "We want to order XX more A350s but in order to do so we can not pay at the 777 rate."

DALPA: "Thank you Sir, may I have another."

I am kidding, of course, but the point remains, we too easily give up what we already have paid for in previous negotiations.

Scoop