Originally Posted by
FrankCobretti
But, hey, wouldn't that cost the airline a whole lot of money? Wouldn't the American public hate us? Wouldn't the sky fall? First, DAL was willing to drop$1.1B on JAL. DAL just announced that it's going to drop $1B so rich people can lie flight on the punishingly long trip to London. DAL can afford to drop a couple of hundred million on us pilots. Second, we aren't negotiating with the American public. We're negotiating with the management of DAL. Third, the sky won't fall - we'll hold it up with our egos.
Thanks for reading, and fly safely.
Your examples are not really relevent to the contract. In the case of JAL the actual cash value I believe was around 400 million investment. The company hopes that investment will generate revenue worth more then the investment.
In the case of adding lie flat seats there was a lot more included in the 1.1 billion besides seats. The plan was spread over several years and was around 300 million per year however the key thing to note is the company stated it would not increase their normal cash outlay for refurbishment of equipment and other costs to operate. In other words all the cash was coming out of the existing budgets for refurbishment and replacement of hard goods. They only made the announcement to make it sound like we were doing something special for the customer.
As far as DAL dropping a couple of hundred million on the pilots the current pilot costs are around 2.1 billion a year for the combined group. To restore wages to the 2004 levels plus cost of living requires at least doubling the current pay rates. In addition if we went back to the old work rules the company would have to hire 3 to 4000 thousand more pilots. Even basic quick math shows we are talking billions per year every year. The items you quoted are pennies compared to what is at stake in the contract. I want a lot on the contract. A couple of hundred million is not going to be nearly enough for me to vote for a new contract however I can't forsee DALPA under the RLA every being able to extract billions per year from the company in one contract.