Originally Posted by
JABDIP
I would have to say you are a long way from lean and mean compared to the lean and mean at NWA. Most of us(fNWA) are appauled at the way DAL throws money around. I flew more hours per day and did not have productivity sits in hotels around the world costing the company more money for extra rooms and perdieum that they do not need to spend. From what I have seen, just my opinion, NWA ran a more cost effective operation much of that coming from much better IT. The recent snow events in ATL and JFK/LGA attest to this, but after all if it was one thing we did know how to do was operate in a snow environment. I will give you that the 3 hour rule has complicated things and ATL has very limited snow/deice capability. Believe me there is room for major improvements here. What would you like to do work 12 days for 75 hours or 18 days for 75 hours. I want to go to work ,fly my tail off ,and then go home. It's call max pay for min time at work(resulting in less days away from home). If they want to sit my butt in a hotel room for 2 or 3 days not flying it needs to cost them dearly.
I think we are both after the same thing, a lean and mean company that will use me in a productive manner(fly me when I am at work).
In two earlier posts you were complaining about "lost jobs". And that is what I addressed. We are in agreement. I hate the productivity sits, 30+ layovers. The IT isn't anywhere close to where it needs to be But I have faith in the company. They've paid $2B in debt this year, and put $1B in improvements and upgrading the product, and we're getting profit sharing. More importantly, the merger of our operations and the two companies has gone better than expected. Sure, there were some growing pains. We're past that. We're bigger, stronger, and more important, more profitable.
I spent the last two major snowstorms in the north with double layovers (twice) in MSP. I'm well aware of the North's de-icing/anti-icing capability. It took us 1.5 - 2 hours hours to de-ice/anti-ice and that was with the schedule gutted. You're never going to see a thousand flights or more being de-iced/anti-iced in Atlanta. There simply isn't enough money, man power, space, trucks, or de-icing fluid to do that.
As Anderson said this morning, when the big storms come rolling through, it is best to just clear the schedule, reset your planes and people, and try it again the next day. There's no need to kill someone trying to fly in that crap.