Originally Posted by
Banzai
Shut it down.
It's something the company wanted. If they want it bad enough, they can come back and ask again during the next negotiation. But the grace period has elapsed, and I see almost no upside for us.
And, again, the company seemed to really want it.
Just shut it down.
Agree. Virtual basing has been up and running at other airlines and subsequently shut down because it was not cost effective for the company.
Our crew resources newsletter said that Bos A320 would be the most reliable test to run and it would NOT BE COST EFFECTIVE.
Some of the dreamers who think that Delta wants this so that you can drive to work 3 months out of the year and spend that much more time with your family need to wake up. They want this because they are thinking two contract cycles ahead of us. They will want the ocean crossing segment language removed. They will more than likely further attempt to degrade VB by removing the ocean crossing segment from a current DL base.
We have over a dozen fleet types. Marketing doesn’t know what planes are flying where 45 days out on the domestic side of the operation. I just bought a ticket to Orlando for next month. B757 just changed to A321. 38 days from departure.
They want virtual basing for wide bodies. Domestically, they can run all the non cost effective trials they want. It doesn’t work. Usair tried it. United tried it. Virgin America did it. Regionals have tried and failed. It doesn’t save the company money and for that reason it was shut down at all of those airlines.
They’ve had over a year to set up the IT for a VB and couldn’t get that done. The grace period is over. Kill it. If they want another 1 year test period with the same conditions they can get it from us in C2020, at a cost of course. Maybe they will be ready for their test period at that time.
Peel back the layers of virtual basing and I think when you find the core (the plan 4-8-12 years from now) you will see a vastly different concept than what we “think they will do.”