Bingo. This has been a long time coming too. Who bails Delta out of Deltas bad decision? The pilots. It’s like that TV show—how I met your mother. You know how every episode ends, the storyline just changes each time. When I go look at daily trip coverage and it’s not reserves being assigned things, rather an entire page of g#_, that’s an issue.

Now take that one step further, they signed an agreement that results in lower TLV’s, and had 9+ months to prepare staffing accordingly. Nada.

Now we are talking about a smaller Jan AE. Citing market demand and Omicron. We all know that Omicron is mild, and you have a 40% less chance of hospitalization over the Delta variant. Something like 72% less chance of hospitalization over the original wu-flu. So, crew resources will make the wrong call again, then rely on GS this summer.

If they can lose a couple bil on fuel hedges, they sure as hell can spend a few extra million staffing the ranks appropriately.

Sorry? If the entire page was IA's....I would support your argument. The only way what you said is reasonable is if you wanted to not discuss what pilots CHOOSE to do for them and their family via G's, but the possible ramifications on down stream scheduling flexibility due to tight staffing.

I'd love to see a formula that uses:

total pilots on DEC 31
-
the minimum staffing number
x
nominal cost of average pilot ($350K?)
/
total pilots on DEC 31
=
additional pay per pilot


That seems like an easy ask, unless of course the company doesn't project meeting the minimum staffing number.

While I don’t disagree that out “leaders” handled the covid/displacements/veop disastrously, United’s smooth exit from Covid was based on the very divisive practice of different levels of pay cuts throughout their seniority list. It was 50/30/10 percent cuts depending on where you fell on the list.

Yes, they had a smoother recovery. Their pilots paid for it. We didn’t have to pay for it. Would you have preferred we had?

On one hand its not fair to expect any airline management to accuratly predict something in such a high state of flux. Best they can do is gamble by under or overstaffing just in case it goes one way or the other. So I'm sypathetic to that to an extent.

However the totality of the response from a staffing perspective wasn't handled as well as it could have been, even considering the unknown variables at the time. Massive VEOP instead of a smaller one with generous SILs? Miscalculation on top of an irrelevant motive. Mass usage of UNA status? Also a mistake. It only saved a little money but did so at the expense of recovery costs. But the most important potential error is the one that's right in front of us. If we can't do a certain amount of flying in total or for a certain fleet , etc, then don't load the schedule with it. Flt Ops needs to outrank marketing for decisions like this. Or at least have veto power.

But you know that will never happen. Marketing drives revenue and profits. Flight Ops costs the company money. They will never listen to us over them unless required to by the PWA. All the more reason we need to get this new contract right the first time.

"Their pilots paid for it"....did they? At the time they did, but they got paid back for all but one bid period (Nov 2020)

Everyone that was displaced was protected at their higher category. There were Captains in the middle 1/3 displaced to FO, bidding single digit % in the right seat getting paid as a Capt.

When the CARES 1/2/3 came through everyone pilot was paid the difference. So a bottom 1/3 FO that only got 35 hours initially in the bid period, that also picked up open time to 75+ hours, was then paid another 35 hours...many FO's ended up with 100+ of credit per month.

But who pays for it isn't the issue...Sailing was implying our manning issues isn't crew resources fault...that our C suite is the smartest around because they turned a Q4 profit.

If I'm UAL Mgmt, I kept all the pilots qualified AND the pilots are in-fighting between the 3rd's and their MEC? That's win-win. Being able to go straight to 200 hires a month is whip cream on top. A large majority of UAL training department were bottom 3rd pilots, so furloughing them would have been crippling when it came time to spin the airline back up....UAL Mgmt needed to avoid that at all costs.

DL Mgmt on the other hand, MOAD's before the VEOP, then sent almost 2000 pilots to UNA, all for posturing to show "fairness" and keep the FA's from unionizing.

If only there was a way to voluntarily pay pilots less while keeping them on the seniority list, available to recall at any given bid period....to quote RG, "What's a SIL?"

FLOPS just sent out an email begging for people to put in slips this weekend because of shortfalls in crews because of Omicron and weather. Yeah... those are what caused this

Huge numbers of green slips do not necessarily indicate a staffing problem for the airline. It is simply an indication that many pilots are willing to work extra for overtime pay. It may even be a QOL boost for some who need the extra money. The low reserve coverage that creates GS is problem for individual pilots who can't swap/drop. I'll say it again large GS isn't a staffing problem, it's an indication we have lots of pilots willing to work extra for premium pay.

IA and reroutes are indicative of a staffing problem. It is non-volunteer labor and hinders QOL across the board.

The fixed cost of keeping one pilot on the seniority list is high. Delta is on the hook for insurance, recurrent training every 9 mos, tablet replacement every 3 years, standby travel benefits and a host of other costs before even getting one hour of productive labor. Next, they are committed to pay for monthly reserve guarantee regardless of how much the pilot works. It is cheaper to pay overtime to volunteers than it is to incur the costs for additional staffing. Defining it as good or bad is a matter of perspective on QOL.

I know pilots getting close to 2 years since they have flown Delta metal…..