A big part of our leverage is the fact that the company is often paying 300% to cover flights, and they don't want to do.

There is absolutely no world in the short-term or long-term where there will be 300% GS or 400% QS/IAs. Zero.

Let's be real. 23M7 was never meant to be used like this. It's great for the guys who are able to take advantage now, but those guys probably shouldn't expect the gravy train to roll forever.

We need to be self-aware, as well. Our reliance on premium pay is not something that is going to help us during negotiations.

 

I wish I were getting m7 for missing all the trips I was willing to fly. Them skipping over the ws step is getting pretty old, fast. Hopefully they'll get that sorted out sooner than later.

 

If there’s not an agreement in place by May 15 this whole quick short term contract is done imo. Those that magically think some close in slip is going to pay 300 or 400% is outer space dreaming, Delta will ride out another 3-4 months of paying 20 million or whatever the number is of M7 payments and be mostly ok by this winter. Im not saying the NC or us as a pilot group take whatever the company throws our way but this “leverage” is not as big as we think it is. I’d love to be wrong on this but I’m not so sure I will be.

 

Our coverage ladder combined with auto accept is what's causing the massive M7 costs. Hiring won't fix it, because WS and OOBWS come before reserves, so it doesn't matter how well staffed we are, an open trip has to make its way through however many people have auto accept WS in. That's a lot of time.

The only way they fix the M7 issue is with some kind of agreement with us. Better staffing could reduce open time a bit eventually, but then that creates coverage to allow drops, so it's kinda a wash there, and it won't affect close in drops and breaks at all.

 

The part you're wrong about is omitting the math, if you think it's cheaper for the company to ride it out until they hit their hiring goal.

Using the latest 2400 hiring target and some very ballpark numbers:

2400 pilots x 72hr x $200/hr = $34.5 million /month.

The company isn't hiring themselves out of this cost the way you think they are. They would much rather keep less pilots on payroll and only pay surge pricing when they need it. Which is fine and dandy, and as pilots we can chase that cheese if we want it. The manner in which that's done just has a lot of room for improvement, and we need to capture, codify, and improve the QOL surrounding it. This leverage IS as big as we think it is. It's simple math.

A contract that further improves premium pay and QOL for when the company wants to run hot can be a win/win. We have the leverage right now to capture that.

And as someone mentioned above, when it comes to emergency coverage, you can't hire yourself out of the SC coverage ladder even with 20,000 reserve pilots.

If we're "being real", you need to keep up with the latest MEC comms, if you're not aware how the company is wiping their ass with the PWA in ways far, far, far, away from how it was "meant to be used":
-Pre-posted rest
-Revoking PB days due to "schedule churn"
-Fishing for reserves inside of reasonable report times, then not holding the DH or approving short term parking, and reporting people to the CPO for not making it
-CS posting a trip award to the wrong pilot's line, then reporting them to the CPO when they no-showed
-Unplugging phones during an IROP
-Promising not to run hot again
-Promising SILs
-Promising to fix pay in 2023
-Claiming average scheduling hold times are 2 minutes
-Illegal sick harassment letters that maybe applied to 0.1% of the bad actors, but went out to 99% of the good actors including cancer patients, now resulting in pending labor lawsuits against the company in 2 states

What happened to keeping your deals? Are any of these levers meant to be used in that way? If the company is pulling the stops on all that while posting record profits, we deserve every bit of the gravy train regardless of what you think the intent of certain contract gamesmanship is.

The company has shown they do, indeed, want to pay 300% to cover flights when in panic mode. They have shown they would rather do that instead of proactively hiring more pilots and schedulers, improving IT/coverage automation, putting VAS into place, turning down the optimizer to build some padding into rotations, etc.