Dude,

I am just a line Pilot reporting the line Pilot perspective. I and 1300 other DAL Pilots where furloughed when our Scope policies sucked. Since 2012 we have been parking RJs and hiring thousands more than UAL, AMR, SWA, and probably every other airline.

I thought scope was to protect jobs - seems like we are improving.

OBTW - I am not “heavily invested” in anything, have zero affiliation with DALPA, have been and will continually be critical of DALPA and think ALPA National is a worthless bloated bureaucracy and would vote in an in house union in a heartbeat.

Scoop

Ah. That could be

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No, I'm talking about the Bridge Agreement. 9E went behind the back of the DAL MEC, didn't even give them a heads up.

Just curious, so should a delta retiree's spouse (employee was... let's say a reservation agent) going on vacation have priority over an active 9E pilot going on vacation?

On mainline flights yes.

On 9E flights no.

Yes. That 9E active pilot is also going on vacation, not to work, no priority is required.

Agreed. If you're going to degrade the "promised" life time benefit offered to previous employees, it better be for a good reason (get 9E pilot to work to protect mainline schedule) and not a bad one (IT can't or won't program 9E dependent going on vacation differently).

Without a doubt. DELTA employee, 9E employee. Delta metal. Without a doubt.
Think of the disparity between the network Delta offers it's regional affiliates and the network they offer the Delta employee(for both nor rev and JS) Massive gain for the regional guy/gal. That's quite a windfall for them without getting the "super seniority", imo

It would have to be on the honor system for 9E crew members to select they are working. That would subject 9E crew members to discipline if they selected the wrong choice, which I'm sure ALPA would not allow.

"Getting 9E pilot to work" Ahh, he can still get to work, he just has to be more careful. We all got to work back in the day without JS. S3A isn't a critical item for these guys.

Jumping in here late, but these "operational improvements" you speak of. what metrics are you using and if they do exist, you think they merit this "NREV super seniority"?
MAYBE, maybe, I'd support the pilot going to work having an S3A but no one else. 30+ years at Delta and then get bumped by the spouse and children of a 2 year regional employee? Totally unacceptable.

We get positive space on the second commuting flight. That's the reason for the S3A. On the second flight, Delta has to buy out a revenue passenger, up to $10,000.

They would drop the trip before they paid $10K to bump...come off it.


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I think it absolutely depends on whose metal. Delta metal should equal priority for delta employees and delta retirees. Endeavor employees and retirees can have priority on endeavor metal. Wholly owned or not, they’re still a contractor.

On a side note, sub-contracting has recently ballooned outside of the airline industry as well. If you ever get a chance to check out the google or Facebook campuses, you’ll find only a fraction of the workers there are actual google/Facebook employees. A surprisingly large number of them are contractors.

I'm not the one who made the decision, Delta management determined it was too much, hence the S3A.

Obvious hyperbole, but this is the reason for the change. They have a me- too with us for unable to commute and it costs too much.

Why not? Alpa doesn't prevent me from getting fined for using an S2 I don't have.

I trust most people, and if a few lost their travel privileges for abusing the system that wouldn't hurt.

Nope, I know for a fact that around the super bowl in MSP that Delta spent almost 15k getting 5 Endeavor pilots to work.

Agreed with the honor system. I bet any abuse would be minimal and it sure beats waiting on the IT department of D.E.L.T.A. (Doing Electronics Like The Amish) to write a commuting only program.:rolleyes:

Is as simple as...only the crew member can select S3A up to a day before/after a trip is on their schedule.

I mean, our JS reservation system won’t let you reserve to/from if is more than 1 day before/after your schedule.

It can be done, they (DL and IT) probably don’t want to spend the resources to make it happen.

I never made the case that operational improvements merited any "NREV super seniority", so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.
It costs Delta more money when a working regional pilot and his family can't get somewhere versus any retiree. One of the many consequences of selling scope. Those 30+ year retirees will have to live with their choices.

Wholly-owned employees getting to work is important, I'm sure everyone can agree. I would toss in for discussion the fact that a working crew member has a much more limited schedule to use those benefits with family. Also, flight benefits aren't always used for vacations. For example, 9E pilot may have to send the kids to Grandma's while he's gone flying Delta passengers around for 5 days and the wife is on a business trip. My assumption is that retirees don't have those kinds of constraints. What does it cost Delta when those kids get bumped and the 9E pilot has to stay home?

I'm not saying that current and retired Delta employees should care about the plights of current WO crews and their families... Just listing some reasons why it might make business sense to allow working WO crews to share their priority with their kids/spouse.

Wrong, how does DL lose money if a 9E employees family can’t get somewhere vs a retiree? No cost to Delta at all! I’d argue again that pilots choose to commute, they shouldn’t be rewarded with higher priority because of personal choices they make.

In the same post you quoted, I had already provided an example. Why you chose to ignore it is obvious.

So, if at Delta, we miss our first flight, the company shouldn't buy me a seat on the second seat?

Anything you make in life, you need to plan accordingly. And not every Delta retiree is a pilot, there’s also FAs, Agents, Mechanics, Rampers, etc etc that had nothing to say when scope is relaxed. They can’t be penalized and have to “live by your choice”, when they didn’t have a vote in scope.

Your argument doesn’t make sense. If kids needs to be somewhere, because the crew needs to go to work, is not Deltas problem is that crew problem. He/she can buy tickets to get his grandparents or send the kids. You know, you gotta live by your choices.

Not sure you want to go there. By your logic, the blame is on the Delta pilot group for making this situation possible and hurting all other DL retirees. Surely you can't blame 9E pilots for your scope issues.
That's just it, it IS Delta's problem when 9E costs and staffing are affected, whether you think it should be or not. We can go back and forth on merits and what planning people ought to do (especially retirees that are free to plan and travel 24/7.....). The simple fact is a WO employee is making Delta money now, while a retiree is not.

I can play your game of “absurd reasons the family of a contractor’s employee is the responsibility of Delta” but I’ll one up you. A Delta employee’s parents are now at a nonrev disadvantage while traveling to a Delta employee’s house to watch the kids while Delta’s employee flies a trip. Huh, maybe employee’s parents should get S3A-0.5...

Scope is protected by the pilot contract. Nobody else has a union except pilots and dispatchers. I haven’t voted in any DAL contract, since I got hired after the last one was voted.

Again, is not Delta problem your family issues. You got hired with certain benefits and responsibilities, they changed it, I’m ok with it. What I’m not ok with, is that every 9E family member goes above Delta retirees and parents.

Which a GS pay for that missing crew is equal or more than a full month pay of a 9E crew.

Actually, in 2017 Delta was the most bumped airline in the industry. https://www.chicagotribune.com/busin...330-story.html
After the Dr. Dao incident at United Express, Delta took a zero bump policy stance, and offers up to $9950 in buyout compensation. The highest on record so far is $8000. Delta has not bumped a single passenger since that policy change.

I would say you provided a bad example. Because, I don't believe 9E parents have priority over active DL parents.

Understandable. I'm not saying one way or the other, there are too many factors to consider. I'm just discussing possible reasons why Delta decided what they did.

Mush like you said earlier, I would say you ignored the point for obvious reasons...

9E family, like in your previous example, getting better standby status go ahead of Delta retirees/parents. You’re just changing your example to fit your sob story.

Hah, actually you're right. After reading your post again your point is absolutely valid. However, we could make the same comparisons all day. The question is which situation occurs more often and is more expensive for Delta? Why did Delta make the choice?

Are you that ignorant? Retirement and our pay was also “ protected” by the Pilot contract - I guess we sold them for less vacation because that went away too.

I don’t know what you were doing in the early 2000s but I lived through that time as a furloughee and my recollection is a little different than yours.


The logic of this whole “scope sale issue” is flawed. Let’s follow this flawed logic a bit:

I guess the theory is RJ Pilots got stuck at the regionals for years with substandard conditions. Well most regionals had contracts - why didn’t they just negotiate a better contract? Oh because they had zero clout and little leverage and were basically along for the ride.

Now look at mainline. We had so much clout and leverage that we took a 42% payout, gave up our pensions, lost 2 weeks vacation, numerous QOL items and, well the list goes on.

And yet under these conditions, with up to 1300 Pilots furloughed we were not able to tighten up or hold the line on Scope. How shocking. I guess this is why conditions at the regionals were so bad for so long - because the capabilities of a union are determined first and foremost by market conditions. The same conditions that prevented regional pilots from improving their conditions are what allowed Delta
and other airline managements to to decimate our PWA, our whole PWA from front to back and Scope was no exception.

But hey, cue Dick Dastardly twirling his mustache eagerly selling scope for, for what? A 42% pay cut? It’s a much better story.

Scoop

He was probably in grade school when all this was going on and just parrots what he hears without any factual knowledge or background.

1. I’m not ignorant. 2. I understand that bankruptcy and other situations and the time is what took us to this point. 3. My point to his reply is that the retirees are not only pilots, there’s so many people that had/have no voice/vote in what the company wants to do with the scope and they also help to build the company the way it is today.

The only and single line of defense for scope is the pilot group.

I'm still not sure what you're trying to sell. You're basically saying that the pilot group, who ultimately voted to sell their scope and allow hundreds of jets to be flown by contractors instead of whatever other options they had, also ultimately voted on the behalf of every other DL work group to allow their benefits to be degraded by those same contractors.

Your single line of defense doesn't seem to have a great history.

What does any of this have to do with scope? The change was for preventing bumping passengers. Delta management could have put any vendor ahead of other employee groups on the flight benefits, not just regional airlines.

You are correct that the Pilot group was and is the line of defense for Scope. What I am trying to point out is that our whole PWA was decimated during a time when Pilots had zero clout.

I could see the whole Scope sale issue if we were making gains in other areas of our PWA and losing ground on Scope. Bottom line is mainline Pilot groups were taken to the cleaners in every part of our contract including Scope not at the expense of Scope.

Since about 2012 DALPA has done quite well with Scope. Not perfect but pretty good. The percentage of passengers flown by connection carriers, perhaps the most important metric, has come way down.