Where would a pilot, much dumber than myself, locate said white paper?

 

I'm not surprised by the question, as it was buried halfway down the latest MEC update. I would have thought this paper should have been brought to the forefront.

Check your ipad/email (or DALPA website) for MEC News May 14 2026.

A link to it can be found there.

The white paper is called "Where Are All the Pilots? A Look at Delta Air Lines' Pilot Staffing"


I will say that one thing I have noticed recently in my category is when RES staffing is projected to be above 20% and every RES gets an additional X-day (yay!), then the PBS awards come out and there are fewer than 20% RES vs the total staff of the category. Think about that when you read the white paper.

 

My friend, who is definitely not me, thanks you very much.

 

Probably true. So please cut and paste to group chats and friend text strings. Maybe print out a hard copy and leave it somewhere conspicuous.

Also…don’t forget to use your contractual right to be non-contactable during the first two hours of your SC period and shield yourself from a good number of short callouts. Just remember to check your schedule in icrew at the start of your SC to put yourself back onto a 2-ish hour leash.

 

Half the pilot group is afraid to bid reserve because they don't understand it. And 75% of those who do bid reserve do not understand how to use the non-contactable provision in their favor.

Source: me who has yet to find a pilot on the line who understands it.

 

My understanding is that you can call sched and say that you won’t be contactable for the first two hours of SC. Ostensibly meaning you are commuting in and will be at the airport within the first two hours of short call, and you will be available for a trip immediately upon the 2 hour time limit expiring.

After reading this post it sounds like it can have other protections/effects as well? Could you maybe explain to…the group… how that could benefit- say for example- someone who lives an hour from the airport?

 

The white paper is also on the DALPA website under "Publications". The link in the email wasn't working for me today.

 

You call in non contactable. This means, theoretically, you can't be hard in the first two hours and assumes you are at the airport at the end of the second hour. HOWEVER, if you live an hour from the airport, you can check your schedule in icrew at the last possible moment that will allow you to get to the airport. If there is nothing on your schedule, you immediately go back on normal SC rules.

 

Ok so do I do this because I’m less likely to be used?

Sorry just trying to wrap my head around this

 

Yes. You take your window of vulnerability (the number of hours within which you can have an assigned report time) and reduce it by 2.

If you have a 1000-1900 short call a d declare non-contactable 1000-1200, your earliest report time is now 1200. Without having declared NC, they can (and often do) give you a report of perhaps 1130. Sure, you can be late and that’s fine when it takes you about two hours to get there, but the point is you can still be awarded that trip and off you go to work.

But you don’t get that 1130 report, and at 1000 you check your schedule. Now that trip is much more likely to have already been awarded elsewhere (hopefully premium).

You can also check your schedule at 1050 if you only need 1+10 to get to the airport, in which case it’s even more likely that trip is long gone… or check it at 1135 if you need 25 minutes.

In that last example, if you check your schedule at 1135 they COULD have given you a 1200 report. But if they didn’t and there’s nothing on your schedule, you are back to a 2 hour-ish leash. At 1140 (five minutes after you checked your schedule and found nothing) they could assign you a 1215 report (with a phone call by a human)…and you would be expected to be there roughly around 1340.

Personally, I just check my schedule at SC start and always retain the full response time to the airport.