dalad

While I'm thinking about it, is anybody in a decent bond fund where my money can grow better than the Fidelity money market?

Sink r8

Timbo,

Except for a drunken orgy of RJ purcahsing, and a failed attempt to appease the gods of frequency by such geniuses as Allen and Mullen, airplanes have continued to get bigger in the industry. What you're describing are pre-merger fleets. What you're not looking at is the resumption of the normal evolution towards bigger airplanes, in a an environment where airlines are big enough to offer frequency AND economical (large) airplanes. And those airlines can also use an alliance partner to cover two city pairs, each with a bigger plane, by splitting them, rather than having two smaller airplanes each competing on both routes.

Take a look at the evolution of the 737, and you'll see virtually none bought the -600. Everything gets stretched (and I don't just mean for us ageing pilots), from the 767, to the 757, to the 787. I wouldn't be surprised if we get 777-300's. Even the 717 is an upgauging proposition.

Airlines are big enough that they don't have to sacrifice economics to assure frequency, and so we're going back to bigger. That's the trend LBP would have us fail to capitalize on. Just look at it in terms of MD-90's coming in to the 88 fleet, and adding seats on the 88: they served to bump up the 88 to 90 pay. How would you argue that under LBP? There would be no basis for it, since a pilot is a pilot, and a plane is a plane.

No LBP for me, thanks.

SailorJerry

You're exactly right. DCI carriers refusing to participate in the master plan are quickly excluded from the party. My guess is that we may see Skywest exit voluntarily in the late stage of our new PWA depending on what kind of deals they obtain in the LCC/AMR merger. If they can pick up their marbles and move, they will.

The other thing to remember is that typically the 50 seaters are just marginally profitable for the DCI carriers to operate themselves. No second run DCI contract provided margins much better than 1-3%. Any resistance from Slywest may result in their 50 fleet getting the Freedom treatment.

While Atkin may be smooth under pressure, it'll only last so long. Basically until his ship sinks. This article is just the first chink in the armor.

I guarantee that Delta would never have put their plan on our table without written consent from all the DCI carriers. They'd be nuts to do so. Or maybe they thought the TA wouldn't pass. Ha. Ooops.

Denny Crane

I'm okay with most of what you posted but the article BB posted says Skywest, via themselves and Expressjet, operate 150 (90 and 60) 50 seaters.......

Denny

SailorJerry

Slywest may have only been speaking for Skywest Airlines. Not Skywest and ExpressJet. Unless I misread the article, the ExpressJet name was noticeably absent.

Sink r8

and

Yes, really: incentivize. On the pilot cost side of the equation, (and I'm sure they look at this in purchasing decisions... remember the 3B6 777 tug-of-war?), LBP incentivizes getting big airplanes, since there is no penalty in terms of added pilot costs. LBP obviously ties pilot pay to airframes, so the bigger the airframe, the lower the pilot cost per seat. On the flip-side of this, the smaller the airplane, the greater the pilot cost per seat. The incentive is for bigger airplanes.

Hell, the incentive is always towards bigger airplanes, as even the productivity system doesn't capture the value of every incremental seat (a 747 doens't pay twice as much as a 757). But LBP ties pilot costs to airframes, and the producticity system ties it more to seats. That's not value judgment on my part, I think it's a simple statement of facts.

As we add seats, we want more pilot money. We have an incentive to ask for this, the company has an incentive to ask for the opposite. The two major beneficiaries to LBP are the company, and senior pilots that don't like what their seniority is buying them right now, and want to downgrade equipment for better in category seniority, without taking a paycut.

The current sytem isn't flawed T, the problem is that it's incompatible with your wishes. The guy one junior to you that's flying the M88 made a sacrfice in pay, and some other areas, but he's senior. He doesn't want your flying, or he'd bid for it, and he doesn't deserve to have you show up in his category under a LBP sytsem. He's already done what you don't want to do, and made compromises on how to leverage his seniority.

So you're approaching the problem backwards, and asking how we might make the system conform to your wishes. The problem you're running into is that the productivity system is better, and provides more money to the group as a whole. There is no logical argument for LBP that works for the average pilot, only certain senior pilots that might benefit. You simply took a wrong turn when you decided, somewhere, that there is no reason you couldn't fly a 737 in a simpler base, for the same money, since you're senior.

But there is a reason, and it's an obstacle in your way: the productivity system is better. You just can't see it, partly because I think you're a good guy, and you're sincere in your motivations, but what you're advocating is 100% wrong for the group, and amounts to pulling up the ladder. I'm not accusing you of doing this consciously, or with malice. I'm just pointing out why you're banging your head on this, and failing to convince some of us on LBP: your QOL desires are understandeable, but the LBP system you require to make them a reality is a poor system.

Denny Crane

I cut and pasted below the pertinent paragraph from the article BB posted.

"SkyWest subsidiaries SkyWest Airlines and ExpressJet operate about 90 and 60 Bombardier CRJ200 aircraft , respectively, for Delta, under 15-year contracts that Kraupp says do not expire until 2020. Kraupp is emphatic that Delta does not have any rights in the current contract to tell SkyWest to cease the 50-seater operations before the agreements expire."

Denny

shiznit

The 150 they operate is 25 more than the end state 125, so with the 61-70 new metric to gain 76's, they have to retire 4.6 50's per 76. (short roughly 5 airframes).

The company could only go to 218 76's if JA plays hardball.

Interesting..... But it could be JA just posturing publicly while knowing behind the scenes they will make the trades. Later SKYW will come out and say how through negotiations they were able to "improve the magins" over their current fleeting and provide "better returns for the shareholders and for a longer time period" while the plan was the same all along.

Timbo

I guess it depends on how you define 'bigger'.

I see 737's replacing 757's and 767's (Domestic routes)

I see 787's eventually replacing 767ER's (a wash, size wise?) but maybe replacing 777's in 10 years, and 747's maybe sooner than that. The last I heard, the 787 is about the size of a 767ER, not the size of a 777 or 747.

I see the 717's as our only 'growth' airplane. Do we call that bigger? It is bigger than a 50 or 76 seat RJ, no doubt, but it's the smallest 'manline' airframe out there.

I don't see that as bigger, just more small narrow body flying with the 737's ((-900) and 717's.

I don't see Bigger coming any time soon, until we order and take delivery of something as big as the 777-300 and 747, I'm not holding my breath waiting for those. In the mean time, we will have pilots displaced off the 767/757 to the 737-900.

acl65pilot

There has been some rumblings of some announcement early next year that does not include DAL. No idea what it is, but have been hearing that JA may be ready to move on his stand alone plan. Time will tell I guess.