Speed Select

Based on their reluctance to offer SILs, I‘ll be surprised if the company offers a substantially compelling ERP to the pilot group.

And with the market in the tubes, how many senior pilots will be motivated to accept reduced income right now?

Are age-based out of seniority ERPs contractually legal? Maybe I missed that part of this thread.

Denny Crane

My answer to that is.......if it's negotiated like that then yes it would be contractually legal. I personally don't see a difference between offering it to 62 and older or offering it to 61-63 year olds. It's still based on age and not seniority. Just so I make myself clear, I think any ERP plan should be based on seniority and NOT age.

Denny

ERflyer

Agreed. Just read the MEC Chairman’s letter and he made it very clear that regarding ERP’s, “ ... Delta has not shown a willingness to discuss such programs with ALPA.” If there is an ERP it’ll be most likely something like the other employees are getting. The company wants shared pain. “Shared pain” is a phrase they have used repeatedly. So far it mean no SILs, unpaid leaves, no
pilot ERP. As events unfold everyone will see the rest of what “shared pain” is.

LandGreen2

Exactly!!👍👍

The Localizer

Serious question. The company has said they don’t know where ground zero is, they don’t know this they don’t know that for short term. How is it then that they are so certain that we won’t be back to normal until 2022 and they are so certain our load factors will be 50 percent at the end of this year? How can they say with absolute certainty that we will emerge a much smaller carrier than what we are?
odds are we are going to be a smaller carrier but just my personal thoughts, as much as we are uncertain about what tomorrow’s load factors brings, we should be just as much uncertain about what load factors bring this fall, next summer, the list goes on. It could be positive!!!!! And we better have the planes and staffing on hand to take advantage of that ESPECIALLY since we are retiring so many off the top in the next 2 years. I don’t think there should be a solution in the next year that involves furloughs. It would be way to short sited. I mean we were told we have an airline that can beat any downturn right? It’s their time to prove it not ours, just our time to do our job professionally

LumberJack

Instead of limiting it to 62+, why not offer it to everyone (by seniority) and limit the benefit to 3 years?

GogglesPisano

At some point it makes financial sense due to the elimination of cascading training events at approx $50K/pop. The consensus seems to be we are fat on widebodies, hence (senior) pilots.

It's up to the beancounters.

777A --> 330A ($50K)
330A --> 320A ($30K) -- more if he decides to go to a Boeing.
320A --> 330B ($30K)-- more if he decides to go to a Boeing.
330B --> 320B .....

FangsF15

Precisely. I’ve repeatedly heard that each 777A retirement equals 7 more training events. I think I read somewhere around the original MOAB that CS likes 365 conversion windows because they could get that down to 5 events each. IF that $50k figure is accurate, that’s $250-350k in training costs alone. Each. Now take a lower monthly credit at 300-350 an hour depending on fleet, and ERP makes a lot of financial sense.

And that doesn’t include the costs to furlough our and then back in training costs that could be avoided with an early out.

Hank Kingsley

Understand you're points and agree. However, Early Retirement to Pilots is different than FA's. I've flown with 80 year old FAs . What is ERP to them? .We have to go at 65. Plus FA's can work any airplane. They don't displace a junior FA. If every 777 and 765 A & Bs get displaced to the 350, 330 and so on. Management knows it. It's going to cost them money to train us. And a lot of trained pilots will sit at home for months waiting to get a TOE on the int'l side. There's smoke coming out of their ears trying to figure it out.

ERflyer

Completely agree. I sure hope management figures it out. I can stay for a long time getting paid 72-80 hours to workout and work on my house, or I can go to training one more time. I don’t care. I am beginning to think they are naively hoping to divide us. They sure aren’t trying to save money with pilots.