It’s not harder but it is more expensive.

I don't disagree with you about the pushback on banding/longevity. Wrt to international pay...why do big planes pay more? Why do we get per diem? I guess becuase that's the way it's always been done. Though, I'm definitely not going to argue against a form of more pay.

UAL and JetBlue both have this model ordered. Can’t imagine we won’t do the same. ER rates need to be the minimum for the NEO.

International pilots already take on currency risk via per diem being paid in US Dollars. This at the very least helps mitigate some of that risk. Most international airlines pay their crews per diem or allowances in the local currency in which they are laying over. Why should crewmembers take currency risk? They should not.

If the 321 neo starts taking over 757 routes it makes me wonder what the 7er bid package will start to look like. Especially in Atlanta where they seem to be sending them all and adding to the category.

Well, on the plus side, we may start flying to the 'burgs and 'villes in Europe again.

Can the 350 fly SYD out of LAX or they going to DH ATL777 to fly SYD?

any idea of the trips the 330 would fly out of SLC?

source?? I sure hope this is true!

AA also ordered 50 of the 321XLR. Miami-South America, PHL/JFK/BOS?-TATL.

For what it's worth, Glen Hauenstein said in a investor call recently that he wasn't seeing the 321XLR for our TATL network. He explained his doubts that it's the solution, mentioned pilot wages being a factor, and reiterated the desire for a NMA solution. I'm assuming by wages, he means its affect on CASM.

Fleet Captain. TT

330 out of SLC will do what the ER is doing now. CDG/AMS/LHR. Rumors of ICN with the new terminal next summer. 330 also does seasonal HNL.

350-1000 will do LAX/SYD. Not sure about the -900.

We’re getting them for sure then if he said that. 😂

that’s great. I’m surprised about pdx and Sfo service. Is that going to be daily? Currently we do it over Christmas and spring break on the 73N so maybe that’s what he was talking about.

The A350-900 ULR is the longest range version with normal interiors.

That'd be my guess. Wonder where the 350 will be deployed to. Same city pairs as 777 or some Europe mixed in? I'm staying put in LAX 7ER-A until the smoke clears after summer flying. I'm guessing another season of green slip opportunities.

Sorta sounds like how the new 787 was touted as opening up "long and thin" markets.....and it never really happened. At least not to the scale that the marketing propaganda projected. Maybe this will be different since it isn't a widebody?

Delta has options for 100 more NEO’s. I assume we will exercise options. Maybe convert a few to NEO LR or XLR?

i believe Aer Lingus flies the NEO-LR

Complete B S.

For all practical purposes, pilot wages are the same across the 320/7ER fleets in the grand scheme of things.

If their lips are moving...

Target audience. Might not be us. If you're the Airbus Sales guy in North America and you hear this, all you hear is, "The airplane is too expensive." The manufacturers can't control our costs...only the price. I think the Sales team at Airbus will reshuffle the PowerPoint deck to show an optimistic ROI horizon, and be ready for the re-pitch. I also think our negotiators will read that comment...chuckle...and press on as directed.

The A321 has issues for use transatlantic regardless of range. Several of the key airports are slot constrained at the prime international departure times on both sides of the pond. You are not going to pull a 767 off a slot for a A321 in the summer and lose 65 seats. In addition to the loss of seats you lose cargo. Pilot pay with that large loss of revenue is almost the same. Frequent fliers hate single aisle aircraft and if you read flyer talk go out of their way to avoid them. Range is still going to be an issue. Claimed range and real world range are two different animals. When you have a 150 mile headwind and get 320 on the track and your alternate is IAD for JFK real world range drops like a stone.

Big airplanes “generally” pay more because they generate much more revenue per mile or hour. They can “afford” to pay more.

C172, B717 and a B777 all leave full from ATL-MCO. Assume each passenger paid the same for a ticket. Which pilot(s) had the most responsibility and therefore liability? Which could afford to pay more?

That being said, our smaller aircraft have a much higher pilot casm and pay rate relative to our larger aircraft. What about legs per day? Doesn’t matter as far as revenue generation. Just because somebody does ATL-BHM 5 times, doesn’t mean they flew more RASM than the guy who just did ATL-SEA. Since almost 100 percent of passengers on those shorter legs are connecting, accounting practices allocate much of the revenue to the longer leg.

Of course in the whole pilot pay area, we can split it however we want like seniority based pay. But, assuming current contract value it would bring down our top pay rate to about the 767 level. That is great for those 767 and lower, but bad for those 767 and higher as there is nothing left above them.

I know we can always expand the pie, but I am just trying to give a realistic example of what it would look like today.

Sounds nice but Hawai’i is a very low yield market for us. I’d love to see all that happen but we have more profitable places to allocate assets.

Are you sure about that? I believe Singapore is the only airline to purchase the ULR variant and they only put 161 seats on the ULR (versus our 306) and they de-activate the fwd cargo door. That isn't a "normal" interior.

The ULR takes advantage of unused space in the wings to gain an extra 3,000+ gallons per side through additional piping and venting. Our 350s routinely depart with the ability to onload another 40,000 lbs in fuel but can't because of the Max GW for TO limit. The last one delivered (3513) bumped up the Max GW for TO about 11,000 lbs but that still leaves the ability to upload another 30,000 lbs +/- which makes the ULR a non-issue (at least for Delta).

They are flying it on a longer flight. With all interiors in the same configuration the 900 ULR is the longest range version.

​​​​​​With all interiors the same, the ULR is a waste of corporate dollars. The ULR and our last three aircraft (3513, 3514 and 3515) all have a 280 metric tonne GW limit. If you hit the 280 metric tonne GW limit before you fill your tanks on a regular 350, the extra fuel capacity of the ULR does you no good. The 350 would need a sizeable bump in GW to make the ULR variant appealing, much less be on par with the B777s.

To put the 350 GW "deficiency" into perspective, our B777s carry 10 less people but have GW limits roughly 40k higher for the ER and 150k higher for the LR. Granted those two variants are no where near as efficient as the 350 but they certainly are more capable as far as lift versus range.

When I went to in command years ago the then CEO commented he could afford to pay a 777 CA 500 an hour because the airframe generated the revenue to support it. He added he would not pay that rate because if he did we would demand 400 an hour for the 737 and the airframe would not support that rate.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t, but it is what we do as pilots. You can look at almost any airframe and you will hear a reason/justification why one should be paid the same as the next one up on the pay scale.

The fact is that the higher revenue aircraft to some extent, subsidize the smaller aircraft rates with their revenue. This is why pay banding to the top rate is easier when you have 100 777’s and say only 10 767’s instead of the opposite. With 100 777’s, banding does much less to pilot casm than if you only had 10 777 and 100 767’s. Very similar to our 737 fleet with only 10 -700.

I’m in favor of pay banding for numerous reasons. In response to “the big airplanes generate more money,” I reply “it’s hard to fill a 777 up without the feed of 717s and MD88s. That’s one (of many) reasons Pan Am failed. They couldn’t get approval for domestic routes to feed their international flying.

I think we all get the economics of plane capabilities. What we have is a much larger narrow body fleet and the pay disparity would benefit more pilots if we spread it across the system. We are not ever going to be a big airplane airline. We are and will continue being the higher end (therefore smaller capacity) premium airline people are willing to pay more for.

3% of our pilot group are at the top Capt pay rate, 7% if you include the 330/764 and only 20% of the group are even above our 7ER rate. It would be an interesting to see what we think a banded pay scale would look like here and cost out a normal career.

Ask the DTW ER guys. No international for them that originates in their base in Feb or so I read.

that’s what I’m afraid of.

After BS giving commentary on how quickly the new AE optimizer tool could work through solutions, wouldn’t it be reasonable (or interesting, or infuriating, or whatever) to ask for snapshot “draft” results once a day for the last 3-4 days before closeout?

He's addressed that before - the answer was that it wouldn't do any good because (a) a decent amount of people don't finalize their bid until near the deadline and (b) all it does is annoy people because they would cry, " but I held that position a week/a day/an hour" before the bid closed.

Plus the bypasses can drastically change what people can hold and they won't have enough information to even guess those until the final bids are in.

Bid what you want, want what you bid.

I want a bypass for 350A at age 37. I’ll bid that. I’ll post here with my results.

Is my bypass to the A350 included those percentages? Perhaps it's 3% holding the categories. I'm not in the category, but I'm at the "top Capt pay rate" you describe.

Lol, ok we'll ignore that many on bypass from the last AE will never actually see that rate, or only will see it for a few months, and add another 100 people. That would move the needle about .5% and maybe push us just into 4% territory.