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Sept 15th Townhall

Old 09-16-2020, 05:09 AM
  #41  
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If the company is in “survival mode,” why did it refuse Cares loan money? I know they got a supposedly better rate with the SkyMiles program as collateral but if you are in “survival mode” wouldn’t you want as much cash on hand as possible and then once you survived, use that cash to payback the debt if you still have it?

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Old 09-16-2020, 05:33 AM
  #42  
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Regarding survival mode- we can’t save the company via cost savings anyhow, so why degrade the pwa if bankruptcy is inevitable?

That is the core of the lesson that I’ve taken from previous decades as an observer outside the industry.

Our Pwa was agreed to by both sides. It provides all the necessary relief to run the business, including FM language, if they can successfully argue that case. If they didn’t see the contract as sustainable, then they weren’t doing their fiduciary duty and should have never agreed to it.
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Old 09-16-2020, 05:59 AM
  #43  
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Originally Posted by sailingfun View Post
A cut in ALV is not a massive concession. In fact a ALV cut was probably in our opener to the company. Even with a 68 hour ALV a pilot could earn far more than our old 75 hour hard cap. Best of all when things return to normal it self corrects and no negotiating capital need be spent.
”Self correcting” is management’s dream. Especially if it does so after they furlough.

I would treat an ALV cut like a loan to the company. If they want to raise it, they can buy it back at the negotiating table when things are better. Or they can leave it.

It might be the one thing we could do that would benefit the company now, and us later. A “give” that I don’t want to take back unless they can buy it.
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Old 09-16-2020, 06:01 AM
  #44  
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Originally Posted by Funk View Post
“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.”
spot on. Sailing isn’t completely stupid, he/she just likes reverse engineering facts to match his ultra pro-company stance. The real question is why?
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Old 09-16-2020, 06:01 AM
  #45  
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The company has not offered a permanent ALV cut and will not. Shouldn't that end the ALV vs QOL discussion right there? I bet you'd swing 30% of the pilots to the ALV cut side if it were permanent, but THAT'S NOT THE OFFER. It's targeted categories for a time frame of their choosing, and that shouldn't get past any pilot who can raise the gear.

And speaking of improving quality of life, why aren't rotations better? There's plenty of pilots who need landings. Shouldn't they be creating inefficient rotations to create more line holders to create more opportunities for pilots to grab landings? That would raise per diem costs though... so, yeah back to back 5 leg days with 5am sign ins and 2300 sign outs. That's missing the forest for the trees.

Finally, in the age of COVID - why are we flying split rotations? So we can expose as many employees as possible? How about so we can add another threat into cockpits? Why aren't we flying with the same pilots and same FAs for entire rotations? Ask these questions and you'll realize none of the possible answers are to save a pilot's job.
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Old 09-16-2020, 06:04 AM
  #46  
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Originally Posted by sailingfun View Post
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.

Sailing,


I generally agree that the current environment is worse than 9-11 but do not agree that we are in "survival mode." To paraphrase Gloria Gaynor - Delta will survive. Without a doubt DAL will be around. More on that later. Can DAL survive without a trip to BK is the real question in my mind. As to this question I don't see an ALV cut making a difference one way or another.

Your above numbers are totally cherry picked without context. For instance the 2 Billion dollar losses you post above where before the merger when our highest profit was something like 1 Billion. Recently we have producing upwards of 5 Billion a year in profits. This is why DAL will survive - too much upside potential on the back end. Obviously corporate America also thinks this way - thus the non-government funding that DAL secured. Airlines aren't going away, well not all of them anyway, and since we were printing coin prior to Covid we are a pretty safe bet.

OK - so I don't agree with the way you are throwing around certain numbers to make your point without putting it into context but I agree with you on perhaps the bigger points of your post:

This crisis is worse than 9-11 - agreed.
ALV reductions will be self correcting - mostly agree.

Now my disclaimer - in the form of questions for APC:

Who here would trust management to honor a no - furlough clause for an ALV drop?
If we are bargaining for this what should DALPA ask for in return?
What happened to exhausting voluntary measures prior to an ALV cut?

To me the biggest threat here is some sort of lower ALV with a lower TLV that works its way into our PWA permanently. Either through poor negotiation on DALPAs part or some sort of BK induced concession. If the company were to be allowed to lower the ALV every off season and ramp it up every summer it could really hurt us long term.

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Old 09-16-2020, 06:05 AM
  #47  
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Originally Posted by Denny Crane View Post
If the company is in “survival mode,” why did it refuse Cares loan money? I know they got a supposedly better rate with the SkyMiles program as collateral but if you are in “survival mode” wouldn’t you want as much cash on hand as possible and then once you survived, use that cash to payback the debt if you still have it?

Denny
correctamundo. I’m also waiting like the rest of the forum for sailing’s reply to this question.......
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Old 09-16-2020, 06:17 AM
  #48  
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Originally Posted by sailingfun View Post
A cut in ALV is not a massive concession. In fact a ALV cut was probably in our opener to the company. Even with a 68 hour ALV a pilot could earn far more than our old 75 hour hard cap. Best of all when things return to normal it self corrects and no negotiating capital need be spent.
please stop spreading false information
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Old 09-16-2020, 06:28 AM
  #49  
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Originally Posted by sailingfun View Post
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.
This management is not walking the walk then for "survival" mode. When I see death throws of a company; I'll believe you. Right now, lots of doom talk from people like you. Delta is not finished by a long stretch.

Peer wise we are in pretty good shape. The .gov is not going to let their airline industry - a strategic pillar - go under. Give the doom porn a rest for now. We're on to the ALV game from management. Let's see how this shakes out.
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Old 09-16-2020, 06:40 AM
  #50  
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Originally Posted by Scoop View Post
Sailing,


I generally agree that the current environment is worse than 9-11 but do not agree that we are in "survival mode." To paraphrase Gloria Gaynor - Delta will survive. Without a doubt DAL will be around. More on that later. Can DAL survive without a trip to BK is the real question in my mind. As to this question I don't see an ALV cut making a difference one way or another.

Your above numbers are totally cherry picked without context. For instance the 2 Billion dollar losses you post above where before the merger when our highest profit was something like 1 Billion. Recently we have producing upwards of 5 Billion a year in profits. This is why DAL will survive - too much upside potential on the back end. Obviously corporate America also thinks this way - thus the non-government funding that DAL secured. Airlines aren't going away, well not all of them anyway, and since we were printing coin prior to Covid we are a pretty safe bet.

OK - so I don't agree with the way you are throwing around certain numbers to make your point without putting it into context but I agree with you on perhaps the bigger points of your post:

This crisis is worse than 9-11 - agreed.
ALV reductions will be self correcting - mostly agree.

Now my disclaimer - in the form of questions for APC:

Who here would trust management to honor a no - furlough clause for an ALV drop?
If we are bargaining for this what should DALPA ask for in return?
What happened to exhausting voluntary measures prior to an ALV cut?

To me the biggest threat here is some sort of lower ALV with a lower TLV that works its way into our PWA permanently. Either through poor negotiation on DALPAs part or some sort of BK induced concession. If the company were to be allowed to lower the ALV every off season and ramp it up every summer it could really hurt us long term.

Scoop
To some this may seem flippant, but this was not a 9-11 "event" - the "affect" though was much worse. What we did get was front row seats to witness the true power of media - social and traditional - to shape an outcome. I hope we learn from this. That's all I'll say about that so please, don't beat me up too bad.

Scoop to answer your questions (in order): No; Scope, Scope and Scope; They exhausted them - the gave us the VEOP/s

Bolded part - my concern as well.
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