I'd tend to agree with you on that, probably not all of them, at least not until they figured out plan B. And this management seems to ALWAYS have a plan B.

Yeah really. Let's count the savings.

300 lost pilot jobs forever due to work rules/increased productivity.
An early out that gets rid of top scale pilots and replaces them with year ones.
Savings from smoothing out future training bubbles and less need to hire for that.
Massive savings on accelerated parking of money losing 50 seaters.
Increased revenue on new fleet of 70 extremely cost effective planes at DCI.
Savings of 1/3 pilot profit sharing up to the 2.5B profit level.
Subsidized A/C leases on an already cheap used airframe (717).

And (they would get this anyway, but it still counts against our 3% COLAs):
Likely full inflation rate revenue increases from increased ticket prices.

And possibly:
Less staffing from less sick calls due to intimidation.
New round of DCI cut throat predatory bargaining to get shiny new jets.

Add all that up and then subtract that from the "costing" of this TA and I have a feeling its very, very affordable.

Another issue here, and call me cynical, but the block hour ratio seems like a pinky promise for now. Just like the 325 cap and the 255 "final last time this is all we need" cap before it.

Once they acquire the airplanes they can come back and seek relief on the block hour ratio not working and making those planes unprofitable. If we've got a hole in C2012, we might exchange block hour ratio to fix that other hole.

But if they never had the jets in the first place then they never had the jets.

It says they normally will not ask for one UNLESS the sick call exceeds 7 days. There is nothing that says they CAN NOT or WON'T.

Pass through question from my email, what will the consolidated fleet look like between now and 2015 if we say no to this TA?

Because they're in the crewroom saying DCI will decrease to 450... but would it decrease to anyways?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THIS. When in the last, oh lets just say since DEREGULATION, have we had to negotiate a concessionary contract?? (quite often unfortunately) The NEXT economic downturn the company WILL have the RJ's they need to provide lift and they'll have us giving up our "ratios". As Justin Wilson would say "I guaaaaaaaaraaaaanteee"

FTB,

You just hit the nail, once these aircraft are here, they are here to stay, remember that their number will NOT be reduced. That one sentence led me to vote NO on our previous agreements, and I think that statement will come back to haunt us with this agreement. I do think once they are here MGT will be back for block hour restriction relief after just a short time.

Keep these jets off property unless WE are at the controls!

Maybe we could get our point across if all the NO voters put their ballots in on the first day the polls open. I have read the agreement and in no way can I vote for this, as DAL has become my hobby job, it quit being a career long ago.

How does this smooth out the retirement bubble? It might make an incentive to retire early for some but they still wouldn't know when guys would pull the trigger in that over 60 zone.

Exactly! Anyone remember C2K and those block hour limits? History repeats itself.

Right now we have almost zero leaving this year and only 80 or 90 next year. Even 2014 I think is only around 150 or so. Very manageable. Its better and cheaper from the company standpoint to try and get some from years beyond that (where the numbers rapidly rise to >300/year all the way to >800/year) to leave in the next 2-3 years. That way they are gone and the big years down the road are flattened out a bit, thus resulting in a smaller training bubble down the road.