Scope Language out
 

New thread to discuss global scope separately. The info is on the DALPA site. It’s worthy of it’s own thread here.

Reading it now and will add thoughts later .

After a cursory read….I’m not seeing how the company isn’t going to just claim, or manufacture, “circumstances out of their control”.

No protections in regards to the Aeromex and West Jet JV. That’s a big fail.

There currently is no WestJet JV.

trans-border is outside of global scope. it's a separate negotiation.

Why was narrow body flying not negotiated in this?

I think because it is meant to increase widebody jobs at delta. Fingers crossed it doesn’t have the reverse effect. Haha

I get that, but as partners airlines switch to smaller aircraft to do transatlantic and South America flying the ratio will lower the total number of block hours we are required to maintain.

The economics of a NEO doing flights might not make sense compared to a 350 on some segments, but it will on others. In my opinion the fact that we failed to include what is an obvious industry trend in this global scope TA is a fail.

Are delta pilots truly worried about not enough narrow body jobs in our bid packet?

How many NB have the range to go any further than BOS-LHR?

Aeromexico (and WJ) still falls under old language.
Also not expecting Mexican wide bodies to takeover GDL-SLC or MEX-DTW.

WB protections look great to me. Good luck to management posting and awarding a remediation bid and then converting the remediated pilots all in a 6 month timeline. I predict a lot of conversions sitting at home with WB pay awaiting training.

Also I like the remediation is based on hours and then converted jobs in a 2 CA/2 FO payment. Could have been 1 CA/ 2 FO.

Agreed. Looks like a ton of Widebody job growth coming. We should be seeing 2007 hires and later into the left seat of non 7ER WBs very soon.
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Maybe even later this week. We're getting close.

Hmmmmm I really hope my sarcasm detector just needs a calibration.

I agree on the remediation being very nice

Converting them is easy. Getting them trained is the hard part.

Maybe I’m a little callous with my first comment considering our cabotage protections, but as to the second, what NB aircraft has a 9+ hour range and a heavy 3 or 4 class useable cabin that adheres to SkyTeam standards like Delta One?

Unless KLM relocates to KEF and travelers are willing to ride a narrow body and make 1am connections in Iceland (Ala Emirates), I don’t see a workable threat. 32N/223/Max doesn’t have the range or payload with a first class cabin for flights much more than 6/7hr + reserves.

Still absorbing the information but a couple of issues jump right out, some of which (AM and WestJet) have already been identified by those on this board. WestJet and AM would still be controlled by 1 E. 2. which limits codeshare:
a. more than 40% of the passenger seats in any month on any pair of flight segments in 13 a city pair (e.g., CDG-ATL-CDG) of such foreign air carrier, 14
b. a monthly average of more than 175 passenger seats per flight segment (e.g., CDG15 ATL or ATL-CDG) of such foreign air carrier on flying other than flying covered by Section 1 E. 2. c. and d., or
c. a monthly average of more than 75 passenger seats per flight segment of such foreign 18 air carrier to and from Mexico, the Caribbean, Canada or Central America,

TL: DR "We didn't think they'd do that..."

ok. I think you might want to brush up on the 321XLR and how Airbus is advertising it to airlines. Segments like TPA-CDG, DEN-LHR are within its capabilities. I understand that on many segments a wide body aircraft will make more economic sense, but my point stands that not addressing a market trend in long range narrow bodies is an error.

Considering there's protection against the potential threat of supersonic aircraft making a comeback I don't see it far fetched to protect against further increase of NB fuel efficiency.

DEN-LHR on a 321? Someone's selling some serious timeshare properties with that one.

Airbus 321XLR
That route is 4,058 NM direct. I agree it’s at the practical limit for a 4,700 NM range aircraft, but these things seem to be gaining range.
and to those that think single aisle and premium seating don’t go together here’s JetBlue’s mint product

I am really disappointed that this type of flying wasn’t addressed in the global scope TA.

Definitely write your reps with these concerns.

C'mon mane. We can't be afraid to accept positive changes because we are afraid of our own shadow. Nobody is doing DEN-LHR in a NB

The XLR is having serious issues w certification in Europe due safety concerns w the extra fuel tanks. AB just got sent back to do a redesign that will likely be challenging to get the advertised range w a “safer” tank configuration. So TBD on these ultra long range NBs.

Trip I generally like your positive outlook, but to me this oversight is egregious.

We fly a lot of random routes to CDG/AMS/LHR mostly in the sooner or later retiring 7ER that could be accomplished by our partners in an NB. Those will not count against our scope with this global agreement.

On top of that I assume that our 320 category pilots would enjoy a RDU-CDG flight every once in awhile.

All this TA needs to be a win is some sort of balanced long haul NB hours clause. To me it’s a no until it is included.

WOW was doing LAX-KEF with a 321N prior to COVID. The airline went belly-up, but that doesn’t mean that Delta isn’t afraid to dump billions in failing carriers all while costing us jobs.

I’m confused about what you’re advocating. You want to make sure narrowbody jets get some ocean crossings, and give the company credit for putting that on a route instead of the proposed requirement for widebody flying? Surely I misunderstand what you want.

No, I’m not advocating that NB are required to do crossings instead of WB. Sorry, if my rambling came accurate that way.

I’m looking for protections against partner carriers swapping their current WB hours for NB and increasing frequency to cover the lost ASMs. Under this TA a partner doing this would lower their WB hours and thus lower our required WB hours since it’s set as a ratio.

This scope agreement has no protections for that, and that is the direction the industry is going. Smaller aircraft on higher frequencies for international. That’s how 787/350 killed off the 747/380, and that’s the sales pitch from Airbus for the 321LR and XLR models.

My thought above was trying to say this agreement at least needs to have a requirement that we have 1:1 growth in this type of flying. Better for us would be all partner long haul hours must equal our WB hours, but I’m more realistic than to expect that.

Since we set a baseline back in 2019, seems to me that the down gauging Delta’s partners have done during COVID, and are forecast to continue to do, and the up gauging that Delta is currently doing make the decision to do block hours instead of seat miles obvious. Surprising that management agreed to it.

Is there a single one of our partner European carriers who has said they intend to send NB aircraft to the US? If trans oceanic narrow bodies were the panacea for our foreign carriers that some of you believe they are, why isn’t it common knowledge that they are including it in their business plan?

On the flip side, if we had to count their narrow bodies on one side of the ledger, do you think there’s a world in which we wouldn’t have to also count ours? Do we want to give growth credit on an equivalent basis to narrow body aircraft? What would we even be asking for?

I highly doubt management at Air France, KLM, or Virgin is are in cahoots with Delta management on this one and concealing their plans to conquer the ATS with narrow body aircraft after Global Scope passes, causing all our base are belong to them.

Plus, I remember reading at one time that the 321XLR did in fact have a 4700 mile test flight. They had to fly at something ridiculous like Mach 0.68, take no cargo, and fly an incredibly sparse cabin configuration. And now the airframe that did that can’t get certified because they were using the belly skin as the aux fuel tank wall without a second wall or safety liner to save weight.

Highly doubtful that aircraft ever enters commercial service with any reasonable seat configuration for anything but near Europe from the northeast US.

My simpleton interpretation right from reading the scope document is that even though NB flying is permitted, it doesn’t count towards any theater baseline. The company still has to maintain the BH floor. I get people are concerned, but Delta can’t simply NB their way outta this. BH have to be maintained. Think of how many NBs a JV would have to fly to make up for shifting from WBs. I don’t see a scenario where one flies so many profitably.

That’s how I read it too. I feel quite relieved they didn’t allow our NB to count.

I see your point and your concern. It sounds like you’re worried the XLR will be the new “international RJ” sacrificing payload for frequencies, and the new global scope doesn’t guarantee we would fly our share of international RJs where in the old scope language there was at least some protection with EASKs.

My opinion is the 321NEO or XLR will likely fly some of the shortest transatlantic flights. I am a skeptic that a partner airline will achieve a saturation level where it decimates our global flying, particularly of the trade offs they would need to make to achieve the deep Europe range. The MD11 barely made Japan, the 73N doesn’t do Hawaii well, the C-Series only barely can do LCY to NY.

Even if I’m wrong, does the new scope protection protect us better or worse against all the threats we face over the next 10 years vs current book? And if we kept current book, would the remedy for continued infractions with an XLR pay enough to offset the potential WB penalties paid under the new scope agreement? I can let the XLR threat “soak” a contract cycle and revisit. The wide body penalties in the agreement in front of us I want yesterday.

The obvious flaw is a partner flying one, two or three 321XLR's on a route they previously used a small WB. That's a reduction in WB flying for us.

With how popular the long range NB market is/is going to be, it's hard to believe they whiffed so badly on this.

Then why not have it in writing just to be safe? Are you so confident that it's not worth having on paper?

Did you not read the part about block hour floor? That has to be maintained. If it’s not, there are penalties. More wide body pilots. I guess delta could give away all the global flying if they’re willing to pay everyone on staff the highest pay rate for all flying.

​​​​​​I talking a few years down the road, the floor won't be relevant (hopefully) by then.

I hope I’m missing something. The block hour floor I saw in section 8 expires after 2025. Is there another one?

Oh so you’re saying we’re going to hypothetically lose wide body flying that we’ve hypothetically added above the block hour floor that is created when this TA is passed? I see. Interesting theory. To which I say..oh well, we’re right back where we started.