Originally Posted by
iaflyer
Why not look at scope this way - would the pilot group, as a whole, be happy with a 20% pay raise?
Sure - let's just give away all flying above 300 seats. No biggie right, it's just a small part of our fleet. Plus, the entire pilot group benefits from the pay raise and those guys flying the big equipment were going to retire anyway.
Scope is very important - the pay rates don't matter if a bunch of pilot positions are lost. Look at Compass vs the DC-9. Sure, the DC-9 is a junior airplane, but each DC-9 that was parked because Compass came in had one Captain position that paid Captain's wages. I'm sure there are some FOs that would prefer a DC9 A position over a 320 or 757 B position.
Same thing can (and is) happening in the larger airplane. Air France's 380 is probably pretty efficient. What happens when they get more and need a place to fly them. Will we see them on CDG-ATL? Or Skyteam might find it's cheaper to fly Seoul-DTW with one of their new 380s vs Delta doing it with a 777.
For the answer to this question, I suggest that you contract your reps and have them invite Rick up to your next LEC meeting. He can very effectively explain the JV and what the response would be.
In short on 380 equates to about three 767's worth of flying for us. It is not a block hr only metric.
I know how you feel, but at the end of the day we at DAL fly just over 50% of the North Atlantic lift based on the ratio of the JV. That is 50%+ for DAL pilots and 50%- for AF, KLM, and Alitalia combined.
If Virgin Atlantic is included in this JV I would hope to keep the current ratio the same.