Originally Posted by
acl65pilot
Jeez 88:
Lets see. DAL needs billions of new jets. There will be some financing for that. They want a good risk after the CH11 era. They can exert pressure by tinkering with DAL's debt rating if their costs go way above the margins that they feel are safe.
You tout being a business man, you know that unless you are able to buy everything in cash you have to listen to the banks to get those loans. It is called a good credit rating. Lose that, and it gets very expensive to compete. We should see that after the last ten years. It is not rocket science.
It just means that for every action (restoration, raises et al way above industry norms) will cause and equal and opposite reaction to reign in costs. If AMR and CALALPA do not get this level, then we would be way above them wrt to costs, and as we saw with LUV killing markets in the last decade that is a dangerous place to me. I prefer to write history not repeat it.
You had me at "billions of new jets"!
I seriously doubt that restoration of our pay would increase the overall costs at Delta to the point of effecting our credit ratings. I still think you are overstating the possible effect of our little piece of the pie getting restoration. Now financing "billions of new jets"... THAT would be expensive!!
So you think we need to be limited to "industry norms" in pilot compensation. That's very interesting considering you were one of the ones that up until recently was calling for significant steps toward restoration with C2012. I would remind you that the "industry norm" right now is at least 40% below what it has historically been. You don't have to be a math major to figure out that will take some VERY significant increases to overcome. Sounds to me like in reality you've given up on restoration. Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. Just don't expect me to be comfortable with that opinion and, especially, don't expect me to be comfortable with being represented by people who think like that.
You see, THAT is one of the real reasons why we are here even discussing DPA. ALPA has failed to make even the most basic efforts at restoration. I had a long sit in ATL yesterday and spent quite a bit of time visiting with a couple of the ATL LEC reps. I was actually impressed with what they had to say. They seem (at least they were saying the right things to me) to be coming around and on board with the idea of very significant increases for us with C2012. This is just my take on it, but I think maybe the old, LM way of thinking (apparently your way of thinking now) is on the way out.