Who said anything about getting rid of your choice to move aircraft?

 

if the % of WBs went up would our pay? What about the inverse?

another reason was until recently UA outsourced a larger % of their domestic flying vs bringing it in house on the 717 and 220. But I would absolutely rather have those planes on property vs that flying outsourced to RJs.

 

by having larger aircraft pay more it offers opportunities for pilots to decide if they want to stay on a smaller aircraft and enjoy better relative seniority or bid larger aircraft and earn more money. Pay banding all aircraft together takes away both those choices.

let’s take a hypothetical ATL captain. Let’s assume they are about 6000 system wide. Currently this pilot has the option to bid 717A and be in the top half of their seniority list and get days off that work for them, conversely they could bid the 7ER and give up the schedule control in exchange for a raise. Some might pick the 717 and others the ER, but current that is a choice they can make. If they were pay banded both those options would go away. The pilot who is willing to make less for better relative seniority is no longer able to do so and the pilot who wants to earn more now has no where to bid to do so.

 

And the 'lectric bill at the sim center is cut in half.

 

If the percentage of WB goes up now it doesn't have any effect on our pay rates going up either. I'm not following this line of thinking. And of course, I'd rather have all Delta flying be flown by at least 2 Delta well rested pilots.

As to your other point, maybe I'm missing something but once it all shakes out, there will still be choices that people make based on the flying they like. Pilots will still be able to choose the less attractive flying and instead be senior elsewhere. There will still be factors such as destinations, computability, aircraft preferences and bases, not to mention choosing to stay longer in the right seat.

 

I can see your point, but having flown the 320 trips prior to the optimizer, and then the abomination that came after, I’ll take schedule improvements for 10000 Alex. I’m glad your trips are, and have been, less miserable.

 

I love this APC because of posts like this.

 

Under the current rules, when Delta adds WBs, that creates more top paying jobs. If the % of our fleet that is WB grows then so does the average pilot pay. This is the principle of UA pilots making more you discussed earlier. on a smaller scale, delta seems to be replacing smaller aircraft with larger ones that pay more. 737-900 and a321s replaced the m88s, the max 10 was ordered to replace the A320s, ect. If we were to negotiate one pay rate across all fleets, should it adjust based on fleet composition, or just be whatever rate we get based on our fleet when we negotiate.

but not even remotely close to what we have now. If all aircraft paid the same it would reason that the 50% mark on any given aircraft in the same base would all be pretty close in seniority to each other. The biggest driver in the difference in seniority among aircraft in the same base is usually pay. Having the opportunity to decide to stay senior in a junior category or keep moving up the ladder to increase their pay gives pilots more opportunity to do what is best for them. Not to mention training churn is good for the pilot group and would go down significantly if everything paid the same.

 

We'll just have to agree to disagree on the other points, but I concede that this would indeed be a concern for lower staffing requirements.

 

Yes,

Back in antiquity (sometime pre C2000) we had 7 weeks. It went to six weeks, possibly C1996, and stayed at six until BK around 2005 and has been five weeks henceforth.

Sailing or 007 can probably confirm the exact dates but they predate me.


Scoop