LandGreen2

I get what you are saying, but why should the union give it as a freebie? What about making it permanent then if company wants to increase it, then fine use it as leverage for contract 20xx? Not sure I’m a fan of targeted ALV without commensurate duty obligations or more. Seems better for furloughed pilots to have across the board ALV.

Sorry if this point has already been made thousands of posts prior! Disregard then

FangsF15

Oh, the irony...

sailingfun

Your points are valid except for one point. This company is in survival mode. You can deny that all you want but it does not change the facts. In 2002 and 2003 Delta lost 2.7 billion dollars total. They were never able to recover and filed chapter 11. We lost that much money or more in Apr and May. We are currently losing 2.7 billion a quarter! Traffic in 2002 after 911 was down 10% from 2000 the best year in Delta’s history and it was devastating. We are done 70% now. Thus does not even get into yields which are also horrid. We are carrying 30% loads while charging half of what we were a year ago. If that’s not sobering what can you say. Frankly I am stunned that all the company is asking for is a ALV reduction to partially offset the cost of not furloughing.

DALMD88FO

Sailing the problem if that the company wants the ability to target certain categories while running others hot. So while there is no international flying they will cut the ALV in those categories and keep the ALV high in the domestic NB categories. How does that play into the we are all in this together song and dance?

Jaww

When times were good they wanted every penny squeezed from us for improvements. Is it not crazy that we learn from our employer and expect some pennies from them for improvements they want? Survival mode or no, it’s up to us to keep the PWA worth something.

gzsg

Sailing you can have a voluntary ALV reduction and you and your friends can go as low as you like.

sailingfun

Squeezing every penny from us saw my compensation more than triple in 12 years. Delta’s pilot costs soared to the very top of the worldwide airline industry. Management completely and utterly failed in that squeezing!

Jaww

When it was time to negotiate a new PWA they balked. Now we balk and we are bad?

Funk

“Survival mode” for the company would actually mean something if they genuinely acted that way. You seem to want to spout “survival mode” as an all purpose Jedi mind trick to invalidate any argument you don’t like, but it doesn’t quite work that way when the company says and does things that are radically inconsistent with an organization clawing for survival. As it is, they act more like the “starving” panhandler at the edge of the Walmart parking lot, turning down work and offerings they don’t like. Anyone here been to Ranger School? One thing you learn from those bubbas is that you never turn down food because you don’t know if it will be the last, but after pocketing the savings of an April rebid, the company wasn’t hungry enough to offer SILs to save more money. And before you respond with the nonsense about unknowable take rates, consider what “survival mode” actually means, and that five months later, after dramatically cutting the daily cash burn and raising tons of liquidity, the company is in “survival mode” enough to use FM to avoid paying one month of furlough pay to the the most senior furloughed pilots, all while raising another $5.6 BILLION in new cash from the frequent flyer program.

The reality is that the company has painlessly raised sufficient cash to hunker down until they (and others) forecast a return in revenue. Don’t forget they feel choosy and confident enough to turn down additional government loans just like a panhandler turning down work because he really isn’t starving. In the meantime, they’ve engaged in a lot of dramatic theatre to try and reset their overall cost structures. MOAD (thoroughly impossible to execute as published and awarded), 2558, and 1941 are all actions aimed at putting pain on the pilot group to try and create negotiating leverage more than than actual savings. All the talk of exhausting all the possible voluntary measures is just that, talk. “Fighting for survival” would have meant a series of cobbled together cost savings LOAs from the beginning, SILS, long term PLOA, USERRA relief, to name a few, would all have been steps for a company in “survival mode.” Dictating a targeted ALV reduction and calling it voluntary doesn’t pass the “survival mode” smell test. And, while we’re at it, let’s just remember what the gap in say versus do means in terms of credibility, or profound lack thereof, for a company that has implied pilots weren’t helping shave costs, has attempted to negotiate in public, and claims that FM in one area compels them to use it in all areas of the contract.

This company may have the sign out saying “no furloughs for ALV reduction,” but it is hardly genuine or representative of a company fighting for “survival.”

sailingfun

We will revisit your post next summer. I hope your correct that the company has no real issues.