Originally Posted by buzzpat
Delta doesn't pay for our instructors to instruct anywhere other than ATL. I have a pretty strong hunch that North instructors will soon have to live in MSP or suck it up when it comes to commuting.
The salad days are gone brother. If a former northie, or a southie for that matter, wants to instruct in ATL or MSP, they'd better figure out a way to get there and do that. The survey says that Mother DAL ain't gonna pay for it. Just the facts, ma'am. And, in fact, its not on their own dime. They get paid for the highest seniority position they can hold, they get much more control of their schedule. If they have to commute to MSP and hang out at the Holiday Inn, my heart does not bleed. Instructing is a cushie gig, especially for the line guys. It just got less cushier.
buzzpat, just for some historical perspective, fNW paid EVERY instructor an override. I think it was $400/month. So every instructor got the same benefit on a $$$ basis. On a percentage basis marginally better for lower paying aircraft.
IMO this helped improve our instructor cadre since it eliminated a lot of the dollar chasers, that may or may not have been good instructors. It gave some incentive to those that wanted to be instructors because they liked it and/or were good at instructing but didnt want to be penalized for instructing.
The current DAL incentive really encourages dollar chasers that like to be senior on their equipment rather than junior on something that pays more. IMO this degrades your applicant pool.
I can't see any financial incentive for 747/777 instructors, so maybe its a QOL issue or maybe they like instructing. Whatever their reasoning, a 747 instructor that does not live in MSP is losing money unless he is doing extra "events." He is already at the highest payscale he can hold and ends up having to pay for his own hotel and not getting any per diem even though our only 747 base is DTW.
I think in many cases the FO instructors get hosed to at DAL. If I were to volunteer to be an 330FO instructor, I would get a whopping $9/hour pay raise since I can hold 744FO. At 80 hours/month and after taxes that woudnt cover the hotel/meal expenses for a full month of instructing. I don't know if DAL pays the international override to instructors, but if they don't thats another pay hit.
I wonder how many of the DTW777A live in ATL and how many that don't will volunteer as instructors.
You may not like the fNW way of compensating instructors, but RA was at NW when it was being done that way. It obviously didn't bother him then, not sure why it should bother him now.
DAL is a new airline now and we now have a training center in a base that
a) is not our largest base (its not 2nd largest either)
b) does not have pilot base for every single aircraft type in the fNW fleet.
If they open ATL330 and close MSP330 to adjust staffing there will be no widebody aircraft based where the training center is located. When is the last time that happened at DAL?