Jumped up another 17 seniority numbers!

Alaska to begin Seattle-Salt Lake City service in April. :(

Alaska Airlines Announces Twice-Daily Service Between Seattle and Salt Lake City - Yahoo! Finance

Exactly.

We've cruised with one of the better cruise lines. The standard contract was 7 days a week, 16 hours a day, 10 months on, not allowed to sit down on the job, sometimes ate from the passengers' left overs. Being Catholic, home for two months was just long enough to get the wife pregnant and see the results of last year's effort. After a couple of kids the crew was locked into the career to raise the kiddos. They were frequently reminded to "make eye contact with customers and smile" to the point it was a pretty funny inside joke. Yet, the crew was thankful for the job.

Folks, those of us in a union and the multitude of non union employees who enjoy what we have achieved in our 150 year effort simply don't appreciate what the efforts of organized labor have created for them.

Just google Henry Clay Frick.

Sailor;

Nobody is saying DAL is hell on earth. However, it is not the employer it once was. Maybe no employer is. One thing is certain, DAL does a great job hiring talented pilots. IMO, in the past, DAL generally had the "pick of the litter."

With the loss of the DB and the advent of the 401k, immediately DAL became a job, not a career. Employees with jobs are far more mobile than employees with careers. I don't have any hard evidence, but have heard that a number of AA FO's have exercised that mobility.

In a perfect world, DAL's ability to hire the best available should translate into the best paid. While the world isn't perfect, in this industry and in this country, if you are a W-2 employee, your golden years are going to be about the same as any other w-2 employees golden years (within some standard deviation).

So, while I am a big advocate of personal responsibility, and I believe choices have results, in our country, this is becoming less and less true. I don't have any real pontificacious solution, just genuinely telling how I see it.

In response to your query about how DAL pilots fell short with 4,8,3,3: I can answer that. We didn't strike over a 50% paycut and loss of our pensions - in fact, we (collectively) volunteered for it. We agreed to 4,8,3,3 effectively saying that bankruptcy rates were the new normal. Given those two data points, I cannot for the life of me see why we would ever expect the future threat of a job action to be taken seriously.

Without the credible threat of self help, our "union" is IMO effectively reduced to a communication channel to/from the pilots.

Why the ":("?

Delta will defend this route at all cost with additional RJ's.

Delta is running completely full 757's on that route now. Guess the Alaska flights will make life a little easier for commuters anyway.

I completely understand what you're saying. We have been greatly singled out in terms of being in the midst of a long term career depression. I think we all understand the economics of what's going on though. The wages at the majors were driven up when there wasn't a surplus of qualified pilots. As much as people may say this isn't a law of supply and demand it is. In 2010, Delta had 11,000 applicants, 5500 of whom were competitively qualified. They selected only 150 or so from the street. If they couldn't pick the needle out of the haystack they weren't trying hard enough.

As for who or who didn't make the decision to reset wages in the post bk era, that's true if you were hired in 1998 or before. After that, look at what a career has looked like. Not so great, right? But look at what a career that started in 2010 looks like. We aren't immune to the concept that we were selected out of 11,000 applicants. While I'm happy to be making over $100 an hour now, the company continues to grossly undervalue us as a whole. Unfortunately the company hasn't had to play the game where they have to buy quality. Quality arrived at their front door in droves. That being the crux of my argument. For as "bad" as it is, we haven't driven away the applicant pool. However - when it dries up - expect a large raise. I hope.....

Thanks a lot, just spit coffee all over my computer screen.

I'm guessing this means Delta will be running less full 757s on this route. Does anyone have a Western Airlines route map circa 1984? Not all those people moved to Queens and Atlanta. Quite the opposite in fact...