I stand corrected. In return for giving the company something that was worth hundreds of millions over the duration of our PWA, we received a pinky promise from management that they would no longer disregard a particular section of our contract.

It takes a true ignoramus to be unable to comprehend how lopsided this deal actually was. Hartmann and the MEC’s approval of it either indicates collusion with management, or outright incompetence. The emboldened attitude that management has adopted today is a direct consequence.

Which further illustrates the need for greater checks and balances within DALPA. Do you truly believe that the deal, as written, would have passed MEMRAT?

Im curious to know if retirement for you means yelling at clouds more, or less? Can’t believe you’d stay around any longer considering how bitter you are.

Is it irony, or some other lingustic discription, that the Delta pension fund manager is being recognized for outstanding investment and fund management that has brought Delta pensions to fully funded? Not your pension of course. ALPA didn't cause your pension to fail but they did the best for you possible at the time. Know thy self, Know thy enemy.

You’re going to need to talk specifics if you’re interested in actual debate, although my hunch is you’ll prefer to speak in meaningless platitudes. What give are you discussing, for what pinky promise?

I’m assuming you have talked to your reps about this deal, and maybe even to the scheduling committee chair in whose judgement this was the least-worst way to deal with the company’s shenanigans. What response did you disagree with, based on what data points?

I don’t see any new emboldened attitude out of management - their anti-pilot arrogance has a long track record and all the old heads repeatedly tell us this is nothing new.

If you need a refresher on the specifics of the settlement, then I recommend reading the multitude of previous threads in which myself and others debated it in detail. In addition, you’ll find what you’re looking for in CA bulletin 23-03.

I have spoken with more than one rep regarding the settlement. Not all were in favor. I am also familiar with Kellett’s position. I found it disappointing that a committee chair with an otherwise great track record chose to support contract concessions as a solution to the backlog of violations that his committee was tasked with enforcing.

The bottom line is that we significantly reduced the company’s trip coverage costs, all while receiving nothing of value in return. At the very least, the concessions should have been valued appropriately and traded for a quid of equal value.

While I agree with you that management has a long track record of anti-pilot arrogance, this is the worst that I’ve personally witnessed during a contract implementation period. I don’t ever recall a blatant refusal to implement certain items that management doesn’t care for, nor any memos with the tone of BP’s, in any of our previous contract cycles.

I'm not defending the decision for sure, it was a terrible deal. We codified some assignment language that was vague and loose but it was NOT adequate for the financial weight given up. As for SK, my understanding is that the commitee is and has been overwhelmed by ACE and the commitee has little ability to function out side of auditing and that needed to change for the long term health of the commitee, which he is tasked with managing. That said, I think managements refusal to pay and schedule appropriately was intentional to force a settlement by making the situation unsustainable. These deliberate actions were entirely the company's doing.

The ALPA response was slow and effort consuming but gaining a robust response tool with the app system and the eventual direct data analysis so the company would eventually have to change or pay much more and timelier. 23.W.1.d. was going to speed up the response and the company knew they would be on the hook for a lot more pay. They drove the task saturation to force a capitulation and mitigate the financial liability. The company (our current VP RG) made a concious decision to weaponize 23.M.7. and the overwhelming response letter by current and past ALPA MEC members was effectively written on rice paper and disolved when recieved. If fact I think it emboldened RG and was the catalyst to his promotion.

Ted I usually agree with and like your posts here. However, this is way out there for you. The point is we negotiated for it in C19, which means we gave something up. Then DALPA (specifically DH) give that negotiated item back. HOw would you feel if it was something more apparent, like DH seating? Say he just decided to go back to the old way to resolve a grievance? It's no different here with the batch sizes.

I thought the section of the policy manual that was used allows the MEC chairman, solely, in certain instances of grievance resolution, to act unilaterally in the best interest of the organization. I find ti hard to believe that councils 1,16, 20, 48, 54 and 81 would agree to this. You probably have it, but can you find the memo that indicated the majority of the LECs voted for this or agreed to allow the MEC chair to do this?

I don't need a refresher, since I talked directly to my rep immediately when the agreement was released. I wasn't pleased one bit. And while I'm still not sure we made the right trade, or that such a significant departure from past practice should have gone to memrat, as an adult I understand there are difficult decisions to be made after a reading of the terrain we find ourselves in.

Your "bottom line" is nothing more than that - your personal bottom line, that leaves out a ton of the complexities that exist in real life and not here in make-stuff-up-or-ignore-facts-APC-land. You may have gotten "nothing of value", but that doesn't mean nothing of value was achieved. And when you leave out the details I now know you're aware of (if you indeed discussed this with several reps and have heard SK's perspective), you do actual harm to our Association. When you infer our MEC chair is in collusion with managment, you're an effective tool of management to destabilize our union and create division at the pleasure of management. I don't question your motives, but I think you and those who mislead as you do are ignorant to the damage you do with each of your posts.

Some facts you left out:
1. The data that everyone points to that would make a strong case during a 23M7 grievance doesn't actually exist. There was no proper or official tracking of 23M7 use and no database to mine other than a mess of ACE reports or other disjointed records of suspected violation based on incomplete information. Compiling what did exist would be a monumental effort that we aren't currently manned for. If I asked you what time you woke up every day for the last 120 days...yes, that data exists but it is not practical and perhaps impossible to ascertain it. The new agreement creates a mechanism that will enable tracking as we go forward, to actually hold company feet to the fire instead of just yelling about it.
2. A large number of pilots demanded the seniority abrogation stop. You personally may be happy that total company expenduiture was up over baseline, but if you're senior and you keep watching junior get IAs that should have been your GS, you have a legitmate gripe.
3. Many of us did not want batch sizes to grow, and certainly not grow significantly. However, I'm intelligent enough to understand the actual benefit to a large part of our seniority list that wanted the coverage ladder to move more quickly without violating seniority. So while the batch size growth works against my own needs, I am mature enough to acknowledge competing priorities within our seniority list and I don't turn everything that works in someone else's favor as a freebie to management or weakness of the MEC chair.
4. The negotiators notes that everyone said would make a strong case for misapplication of 23m7 didn't actually exist in the verbiage they were thought to exist. Taking everything to a grievance and arbitration left open the real possibility of a company win that would allow them to continue unmonitored, unrecorded and unencumbered 23M7 with excessive seniority abrogation. Waiting for a grievance to paly out would have meant extended operational chaos, continued seniority abrogation, and a lot of unknown as to the eventual end state of an arbitrated agreement. Many of us have seen the pennies on the dollar that eventually come out of even arbitrated wins, so we went for what could be achieved relatively quickly before what was likely to be (and has played out to be) and incredibly profitable holiday season.
4. SK has the best finger on the pulse of scheduling shenanigans and the REALITIES of how they operate, how we operate, how we could/can/can't hold the company's feet to the fire, and gave his best assessment to the MEC and to the MEC chair. They all then decided how to go forward. You can be disappointed in that process or in SK's assesment, but I personally trust it since I know he knows a heck of a lot more than me.
5. SK has to ensure his committe can function on a realistic timeline, but that's not for the purpose of his committe - it is to answer the demands of the association that we not wait months to resolve pay disputes. The weeks and months ahead will demonstrate whether the newly created avenues to resolve pay errors is actually effective, but leveraging company resources to break down the backlog sure sounds better to me than putting our own people on it.

Whoa - lots of words. Why? Beacuse all of this is far more complex than you either believe or mis-represent it to be.

Folks - you have every right to be fired up about whatever issue you care to. I just encourage you to have a discussion with your reps (face to face if that's possible) and make sure each of you actually hears the other. Make sure you're heard - but also listen. Then vote at every opportunity, and participate in DALPA activity in whatever way works for your situation. That's the only way we stay strong as a union, and the only way to effecitvely counter the greed and eploitation that will forever exist in our management team. Save your fires for them and resist the inertia toward circular firing squads.

The chairman specifically signs agreements, but to say DH gave anything up himself misrepresents the process around the horseshoe. I think this should have gone to MEMRAT myself - and I let my rep know that. The MEC decided to take this path - not DH alone.

It didn't need to change for the health of the committe - it needed to change so pilots could achieve resolution to their complaints in a timely manner. Take a look at the anger pilots have with the ACE timeline, and where those fires are directed (the committee) instead of the violator (the company). You may attribute intentionality to the actions of scheduling where I think in many ways it is sheer incompetence and undermanning, but perhaps we agree it was unsustainable. Since I'd like to find wins that return us to proper application of seniority, a trip assignment timeline that is favorable to QOL (and not just the minority who can or wish to exploit system chaos for financial gain at financial expense of those who cannot or will not), and because systemic chaos ultiately hurts our brand and profitability/market share...I see some benefit to the agreement we came to. It's not the agreement I would have pursued but I do think it's better than its precedent. It's also attributable to the MEC and not just to DH.

You keep saying this, but it’s not true. C2019 actually loosened the batch sizes slightly.

Batch sizes came from one of the COVID LOAs

These are all great points, but it still should have gone to memrat. The fact hat it didn't is probably a good sign that they thought it wouldn't pass, which is telling. I'll change my view from we didn't get anything to we didn't get anyhwere close to enough. Getting a call at 0400 for a sign-in of 1700 with a batch size of 99 (it went in the top 5), is completety unsat. Even the smallest guardrails in the middle of the night and/or with X time to report, would have been a welcome addition.

I remember hearing once upon a time that OUR pensions were funded at well over 100%. No danger whatsoever. Alpa and the company guys were running around high fiving each other.

Good times.

I'm actually not bitter at all.

The same system is also in place at SWAPA....and they are definitely not a train wreck these days.

I wonder how much of that has to do with how much interest rates have risen over the past few years, since it’s my understanding that’s what ERISA uses to determine funding requirements.

Thank you for taking the time to write this.

Often times MEC level decisions are made after hours and hours of meetings and expert level testimony. A majority of line pilots won’t invest the time to educate themselves on all the facets of an argument, which is WHY we have reps. This is the main reason we don’t need the membership voting for the MEC chair. I would much rather my rep, that spends days and days with a candidate, make that choice rather than individual pilots making a 5-min (if that) choice after the best populist email. (Vote for Summer!)

I get why our current chair is taking some flak, and why there are some upset over the 23.M.7 issue. That doesn’t mean that an alternate candidate for MEC chair would have made a different decision, nor that we would be better off if everything went through the grievance process. We could be in a WAY worse position. And the current chair can still be recalled anytime the reps want. They are satisfied enough with the performance to continue.

Leaders sometimes have choices that don’t have a clear win. Best wishes to fore mentioned retiring John Malone, definitely one of the greats - he’ll tell you firsthand about times he’s had to bring a turd sandwich to the pilot group.

yep. Several years of the company losing money, falling interest rates, and significant retirements with a lump sum option will do that to a pension fund.

I think we are saying the same thing. By health of the commitee I mean there is no capacity for anything else and SK is in charge of that. Other responsibilies were not getting the proper attention because burnout by members doing what should have been Delta's accounting reposibility was consuming the committee. I stand by my accusations of deliberate action. The scheduler level stuff was not intentional but the continued chaos was by design from above for a specific purpose, as was weaponization of 23.M.7. It was still too little a quid and would not have passed MEMRAT, so it wasn't ever going to be attempted.

Whose problem was that? Ours or the company’s? True leverage is hard to come by in the RLA environment. The combination of batch sizes, mass numbers of pilots submitting blanket slips, our lengthy 23.N and 23.O ladders, and limited crew scheduling resources created a perfect storm of chaos that the company never envisioned. The cost to the company was massive, particularly considering that many of those issues contributed to the system-wide meltdowns that we experienced between 2021 and early 2023.

The scheduling committee, MEC, and DH had one job: sit back and relax. We were in the “time” bucket. The cost to the company and their need to resolve it was growing every day. Instead, the company pulled off a successful gaslighting job by convincing the MEC that it was our problem. They succeeded in getting DH, SK, and the MEC to quickly forfeit the massive leverage we had achieved.

Yes, there were temporary issues with seniority being abrogated, but the cost to us paled in comparison to the company’s cost. Further, if you were senior and were consistently getting upset over junior pilots taking “your” green slip, then you were doing it wrong. The correct action as a senior pilot was to clear your schedule, put in a month-long blanket OOBWS + rolling in-base WS, block the ARCOS number, and sit back and watch the 23M7 payments come in. There was at least one scheduling committee member who I am aware of who was doing that himself.

The key fact that you omitted from your long narrative is that we already had a solution in our hands: 23.W.1.d in our new PWA. Ultimately, having direct API access to DBMS would have enabled the scheduling committee to automate the entire process of detecting and enforcing coverage violations. If the company was paying 23.M.7 payments in only 25% of the cases due previously, then the eventual implementation of 23.W.1.d would quadruple their costs as enforcement nears 100%. Management knew this. It’s why they sought a rushed solution from the MEC.

Undervaluing that leverage was DALPA’s greatest blunder since TA1. In time, it could have been traded for a massive quid of high value to the pilot group. I don’t like to publicly criticize our union or its leaders, but in this case it’s due. It’s time for new leadership.

lol Thanks for the laugh.

Well said. That will about cover the fly-bys

What ancman said.

A5S

Perhaps miserable is a better word? I’m sure it’s tough to recognize for someone who spends significant time on websites like chit chat surrounded by like-minded individuals.