Originally Posted by
keenster
Nu and Ferd,
Step out side the box and knowing what you know about both ways of doing business: DAL and fNWA, if you were able to choose one method over the other objectively, which would it be? Hands down for me it would be the NWA way. That is not a slam to the DAL way, just my honest opinion. Both operations have good ways of flying the airplane, but as a whole I feel the NWA way was somewhat safer in that we were concerned about flying the airplane in what we as a group of pilots came up with as opposed to choosing BA procedures because the lawyers say so. I only hope that there is real and meaningful discussions about the best practices, procedures, checklist and paperwork in the future. I feel like there is a combination of things that would be better than both the former systems and only hope that is the goal. I don't think this would be a large change but small suttle improvements. What has been soooooo dissapointing so far has been the shut up and sit down treatment alot of our guys have recieved and the whinning label. Not productive. I for one have not given up hope, but for the guys who think things are going so well because we are arguing about pay check amounts, the fNWA guys have pretty much sat down and shut up and that does not mean that we are all happy and giddy. Alot of us are still pretty ticked off and hoping that things get better. In a nut shell, what the DAL experience has show me is how good of an airline I came from and how good of a contract we had and did not know it. Now the goal is to make this airline much better than what we both had before. Just my opinion and rant and not meant to offend or slam the Sguys.
Having flown with a few S. guys I am convinced that we as a group can move forward to provide the safest operation in the industry. While I absolutely despised our former page long taxi checklist and procedures so anal that it dictated the exact order in which an FMS had to be loaded (yes the dots in SOPA/SMAC represented a particular order), I openly embrace a quieter/safer deck on taxi out. On the other end of the spectrum I sense less SA in a round dial DC-9 with one FDRA bouncing around the cockpit," Hey Bill, what was the airway after FLM?"
There have been some good and not so great changes. Unfortunately for the PMDAL pilots, only fNWA pilots will have had experience with both systems. Succesful integration of best practices will be the result of level-headed fNWA pilots in their presentation and equally open minded PMDAL pilots brushing aside tradition and leaving politics in the employee parking lot. Hopefully these items will be changed to a hybrid of former procedures in the interest of safety down the road; that will be the ultimate signature and trademark of a group of experienced professionals.
Aside from the integration issues I would like to see Delta pull a consistent profit and create a network plan that is the envy of the industry. The past few quarterly statements have been dismal, a reversal in our revenue stream and some movement would get most of the pilots out of the doldrums of the SLI as we would all finally get a glimpse of what hundreds of unpaid hours of transition were for, a better future. Here's to going forward with best practices in the name of safey and attaining profitability.