There are 3 PS grievances that could have been filed based on 3 different issues. The bait and switch crowd loves the confusing nature of this. Think of the elation the donkey feels when the rider drops the stick right before it finds out the carrot is really a turd painted orange.

During the failed TA management specifically tried to insert an uncapped carve out for management incentive programs that would have paid them possibly large amounts first out of our PS pool. That thankfully got rejected when we voted TA2015 down.

Now to current events. The non-contract employees were taken out of the PS pool by the company yet our contract language was very specific on how the pool was to be calculated. In my missive I was very specific saying that I thought grieving this had very little chance of granting us what most arbitrators would think was a windfall however it had definite value as a bargaining chip. I was told by people in the MEC this grievance had zero chance of success so it was never pursued. The PS pool language however was changed for this TA. Why would it have to be changed if our grievance had no chance of success? I am not talking about the PS calculation language which I will discuss below. The pool language was changed even though we didn't file a grievance on the original language. It simply doesn't make sense. Changing the language ensures a grievance will never be revisited by a more aggressive MEC. BTW the bargaining chip I mentioned above evidently didn't get used or cashed out in this TA.

The rest of the PS calculation language was reformatted. I have not had anyone with a Doctorate in Wordsmithing comment on if there is any change in meaning or legality due to spacing, punctuation, or line breaks. Let's just stipulate for a moment that the PS Calculation Language hasn't changed. We won! Only we didn't. There are 2 grievances that applied to this issue. The first involved PS due to us due to the JV violation grievance. Since the JV PS issue was a black and white calculation situation it is no surprise to me it was settled in our favor. The big problem is the other PS calculation grievance that is worth huge amounts of coin over the other grievance is not even being pursued.

Ed announced to the financial world late last year that going forward Delta will now be the first airline in the USA to classify formerly one-time charges such as fuel hedging losses as normal business expenses. Delta never did that before and no one else does either. Back in the 90s when we also had a PS program we had no language to protect us from one-time charges. That is why we insisted on fixing this as part of starting a new PS program. This change of expense calculation is a drastic change from past practice and will negatively impact our PS pool for 2016 and beyond. The MEC is evidently not pursuing a grievance or requiring the company to stipulate as part of this TA negotiation that the calculation in 2016 will remain the same as for 2015 and previous years.

The only way the "unchanged PS language" results in unchanged PS dollars is if the method remains the same as in previous years. Evidently as near as I can tell that is not the case. The company, not the pilots, is being administratively granted a free pass to skim PS money from the pool through unchallenged reclassification of expenses. Just like the JV violations, the company does what it wants while some claim we have protections and have left things unchanged. If this is allowed to stand, you will get less PS than you would have been entitled to in 2015 given the same set of input numbers. High profits and bean counter restraint may mask the initial damage however the vault door will be left wide open. It is disingenuous to call something unchanged when this loophole has been granted by fiat. $762 Million worth of loophole in just the first 2 quarters. The party is just getting started everyone.