Originally Posted by ohaiyo

Gonna need to see your work on this one.

Originally Posted by Stratoliner

Positive space commuting is really stupid. Each seat in each airplane represents millions of dollars of revenue for the company, which is revenue to make everything work including your paycheck. Look, lots of pilots getting Delta One to Europe via standby the weekend school gets out in June for their whole family every summer would be really sweet, but just think for a second, that many empty seats is not good news for your company, which you should care about. Thousands of seats per day blocked off permanently, ticket sales permanently lost, otherwise potential cash flow thrown out the door to convenience an outrageous lifestyle demand. Positive space commuting would turn sane people who don't want to commute into commuters because now it's easy and stress-free. That's thousands of seats per day which are lost revenue to the company and millions of dollars per week. Then, flight attendants would get PS commuting soon enough, it's only fair (heck the case for them getting it is better than pilots, they get paid less and benefit from living in cheaper places).

In every industry under the sun, people move for a job. People pack up the Subaru and drive across the country for a few grand a year, for a good opportunity. This is what normal people do in every single industry. The people who aren't willing to move for opportunity lose out. Just because you can commute doesn't mean you should, and just because you've made that choice (and you're free to make it) doesn't mean that that choice, which no worker in any industry outside of pilots and flight attendants can even entertain, is one which the company should subsidize. Sorry. Think of the big picture. If you told the average American that if they moved to one of a half dozen or so cities, they could (by themselves) earn a top 5% U.S. salary in 5 years if they just moved, they'd think you're bonkers for not doing it, and would move in a heartbeat. If you don't want to do what you would HAVE to do if you had literally any other job, at least suck up your choice to put up with commuting, and not expect the company to pay for it (and how do you compensate the people who do live in base?).

Assume each seat makes $250 per day (at $0.21 RASM at DL, that's 1200 miles per day, which is a reasonable average), and 1,000 pilots commute PS per day, thats $91,000,000 per year of lost revenue. Sure, there's often empty seats, the lost revenue would be lower in practice, yadda yadda, but that is the request you're making when you ask for PS. If half the pilots commute, that's an extra $10k to them per year because of their own lifestyle choice. While DL is doing very well financially right now, at American that number represents 15% of their 2024 net income. Is that really a reasonable demand for what the shareholder would fairly consider an unreasonable lifestyle choice?

Originally Posted by Abouttime2fish

Are you at all familiar with our commuter policy? We get PS on our backup now, company just has to buy someone off to do it….

And the shift to allowing free flight changes to earlier seats has killed non-rev, at least from my commute airport. If I don’t have the JS, I know I’m probably making the call. And I’ve got all the screen shots from 24hrs prior. But I’m sure that’s better for business then just letting me book that seat while it’s still unsold.

Originally Posted by DisMyGamerTag

What is the financial cost of PS commuting? Idk what the cost of pilots is, lets say $5B a year.

Next contract, how much of an increase are we wanting and how much would PS cost of that demand?

And would a pilot get to count the commute towards duty day?

Originally Posted by AirCoxswain

The terms of the LOA precluded international from the VB. The company immediately posted int'l rotations to MCO and the MEC pulled it down because they weren't willing to suborn the company's contract violation.

Originally Posted by Planetrain

This absolutely did not happen.^^^

The MCO VB pilots were awarded the VB and the MEC pulled it down before bid packages were made. The MEC pulled it down for (sadly) unrelated retaliatory reasons. Back then the MEC was split on even having VBs, and members most against it were not even part of the ATL (PTC) LEC. The anti-VB MEC group tolerated the provision in TA2 because it was able to be pulled down later, not because they liked it. We squandered the trial basis too- never to be seen in again in a TA. The company will never agree to it.

The VB provision specifically prohibited ocean crossings starting from a VB, one of many modifications to placate the original anti-VB MEC members.

Not to worry everyone! It’s been 10 years since VB was shot down and look at how many real bases have been created! 1! A whole 200? pilots out of 17,500. /sarc

We’ve got to do something better on bases. This is ridiculous…..

The best part of VB was the V part. It was voluntary. It could not be assigned by the company, no MDs. If it was a bad deal for pilots, they simply wouldn’t bid it and the whole thing would fall apart on its own. As far as it sucking the good flying out of the real bases, who knows? We never even tried.

Originally Posted by ancman

I agree with you.

The “but my flying!” argument is ridiculous. I’m not based in ATL anymore, but my base’s rotations go through ATL often (despite my best efforts to avoid it). Is my base “stealing” ATL’s flying? Are people in PTC shaking their fist at me for stealing their crappy turn / layover?

No base at Delta owns any flying.

Originally Posted by Whoopsmybad

Tell that to the LAX guys a few years back saying hands off their Hawaii flying but demanded a share of the Europe…..
Unlike what most love to believe, everything they don’t like does not always start in ATL.

Originally Posted by Khantahr

Hold on, why don't we like VAS? Them not using it is not a reason to get rid of it. If anything we should make it more expensive for them to put people on short call. Bump it up to 3 hours per SC assignment whether used or not.