My thoughts on this contract, Delta pilots should not lead the industry upward. As I have always said, during my entire time here, the company has only offered contracts when they desperately need something; cannot fill new hire classes, scope relief or a new CEO needs to calm Wall St that labor is ok. Believe it or not, none of these things are true at the moment although the SLI issue is a Trojan Horse.

The world needs 30,000 new airline pilots by 2025, they don't exist. It isn't even remotely plausible to entertain the idea of getting ahead of that wave at this point, with ATP requirements intact. IMO, it will be someone like Alaska, JBLU or even SWA that has to be the one that pushes the big rate upward. Their executive team will use "inflation" to sell the massive raise to the board members and Wall St. At that point the aforementioned airlines will be paying FOs more than DAL captains and that is Delta's worst-case scenario. A 40% raise for the pilots has got to be pretty close to a $1B annually.

We are going to target 85% of the block hours we flew in 2019 yet we need the same number of pilots. Again, my .02, we have been over hiring. The hiring is front loading the seniority list while rates are low with pilots who are also accruing 200 pilots beneath them, per month. This movement will discourage those same pilots from wanting to start over with a seniority of ZERO elsewhere when one of those other carriers pops up as the industry leader in pay. The extra hiring is not wasteful, we are still retiring 500 a year for a decade. Make no mistake about it, the company is parking senior pilots NQAT and flying the doors off lower paid new hires. Our management team is always a step ahead.

All that being said, it is why Delta should not lead the charge higher. If we take something ridiculous like 8%, representing 2019 to 2027 or whatever, we deserve it. It will also set the bar going forward, for the next half decade, that this is all the industry will cash out during the largest pilot shortage in history. Sure, other airlines may get raises that are significantly higher, but will an early 2022 hire give up 1000 to 1500 numbers to go chase the bottom elsewhere? Delta is banking on no, hopefully the difference is enough that junior says, see ya!