DelDah Capt

My wife sent me on my last trip with a homemade video as well. Here's an APC exclusive re-creation of some of the Audio portion of that movie....


WIFE: "Hey, when are you going to clean up the guest room....my Mother's going to be here in two days to spend the holidays."

"...also, instead of watching football this Sunday, we need to go to the carpet store to get sample swatches for the living room"

"...and when are you going to take that dog of yours to the groomer, he looks like Cousin It having a bad hair day"

"By the way, I'm feeling really pre-menstrual today........

flyallnite

Somebody here is seriously psychic...

OSHA to Get Oversight of Flight-Attendant Work Conditions

OSHA to Get Oversight of Flight-Attendant Work Conditions- Bloomberg

I don't know if its the fact that the FAs have real rest areas, a pension, and now OSHA looking after them that makes me ask: *** happened to us?

Collectively, we've let things get way out of hand. I'm not making a gate PA unless it's in the contract. Period. I invite anyone else who is tired of being treated like doormats to join me... it's time to show mgmt, the other employees, and DALPA that we don't work for free, especially when our working conditions don't meet the standard of our colleagues.

No bucks... No Buck Rogers on the PA. And we want a BUNK in zee zpacecraft!

gloopy

I saw that. While its a good sign, we need to see a lot more than that.

JB is not just taking BOS from DL (and AA/LCC) but they are taking the highest yields as well as corporate accounts as well as the over all market share. They are making huge inroads into MCO and have a large LA presence.

They are going into "near international" like Central and upper South America and will continue to grow there, possibly rapidly. While the A320 isn't a beast for cargo, it does good enough when you can undercut everyone else by a little bit and keep the belly full. They are doing that as well, and have deployed thinner markets/frequencies to ANC out of multipile cities.

And their presence in NYC may be in flux on particular ultra low yield routes (which JFK-PIT always was for them) but they are in their infancy implementing a massive pillage of legacy international traffic by code sharing/interlining with any and every flag carrier in existance. Pull 5 people off the Prague flight, 20 people off the Frankfurt flight, 15 people off the Dublin flight, etc. Airlines like DL will have to either let the yield buckets trickle down to the lower fare tiers or lose the pax.

While the (phony) EU economy is tanking, that is only part of the picture and I hope our leadership is prepared to severely punish them for their insolence. Sitting around culling capacity in perpetual pursuit for quarterly bonuses will reach critical mass soon (many think it has already) and that's when the lower CASM carriers tying into vast international markets out of key high density cities will have to be shown a severe economic lesson from the big players that actually have a long term plan. I think (and hope) we are one of them, but we'll see.

That said, JB as a separate brand is very likely for sale, regardless of if they want to be or not (although many signs point to them wanting to be). That would probably be a net win for airlines like DL, where the worst case is a merger/fragmentation/takeover by SWA. That would make the international poaching that much more painful for DL and others, but push over more than a few "low cost" dominos there to set DL up to do very well against them in the long run, just like SWA out of ATL (Clark Howard notwithstanding).

gloopy

Its not about forcing the company to buy more 777's. They will likely do so anyway though, but probably in a way that requires less pilots, like 2 777's to replace 3 ER's, but anyway.

If the demand is there for a 50% increase for VA, then the demand is there. They apparently have no problem rounding up the AC for a 50% increase to one of the largest markets on earth. If the demand is there for that much route growth, we should get part of it. VA management wants the growth, and DL management only cares about running a virtual network with no capex, to the extent permittable by our PWA. DL pilot scope is Delta Air Lines as we know it. Period.

flyallnite

And also, to the guy who wrote the letter to SD regarding the rest facilities on our long haul fleet- You Sir have my respect. I'm glad someone had the courage to say what needed to be said.

gloopy

The protection is that in order to do that, DL/delta.com/skyteam airlines, nonincorporated would have to lose the route from the network. I guess they could route everyone in the US through CDG or AMS though, lol!

We are acting terrified of a tiny little upstart funky fresh hip airline like VA and guaranteeing them massive (50%) growth on their end and the only thing we get is what we would have gotten anyway (either keeping the 7 or going to 0 anyway if the company decided to dump the entire continent from their network).

80ktsClamp

Well, this is going to be easy:

744- Utilized NW's staffing model which was considerably thinner and also only required 1 CA and 3 FOs.

777- More planes now!


Come on, alfa... give me a challenge. And try again on why his basic premise is false.

gloopy

To extrapolate on that a bit, going forward we will order widebodies. We will have to at some point. The backbone of our fleet now are ER's. But what replaces them?

The closest out there is the 787-800 (btw how lame is it that they just call the −100 the −800 these days?) but we clearly don't want those. So we are left with several other choices, all of which are much larger aircraft than the ER. As in a lot more pax carried by a lot fewer pilots. Particularly if we keep retrenching to EU superhub flying and continue to pulldown the great nonstop ER expansion of 07-08.

Heck we could concieveably get A380's at that point. While I doubt we will see new 4 engine jets at DL, that or 777-300's or the large 787/350's or even 330's would take a huge bite out of pilot staffing. The ones that grab a chair when the music stops will get a little raise for the significantly bigger equipment though.

slowplay

Go back and reread, because you missed the growth requirements should that tiny little upstart add flights beyond 21.

80ktsClamp

The ERs have at least another decade on them... so that's good. It is a bit concerning that putting winglets on them has ceased.

The issue that alfa neglected to address with his poor example of statistics is that we are continually diminishing widebody slots in exchange for narrowbody. Ships 624, 625, 626, 628, 629, 657, 5527, and 124 are all being returned to their lessors within the next 12 months.

Their capacity is being replaced by 717s and 737s.

As far as the V-Aussie JV, it's more of a typical thing that I expect from the union. There is room for downside for us, significant growth for the partner, and little upside for us... while removing the extreme downside.