You may not miss it, and I may not miss it, but the category will miss it when block hours are calculated, and AE's and Displacements are effected.

I can't believe there isn't enough revenue in there to run something equal to or smaller than Carribean, for example a 737-700, on the route that evidently supported a 757 profitably.

So I see more people griping about how we get smoked in earnings by SWA. So let's talk about that.

According to the SWA profile on APC, Southwest has roughly 570 airplanes and 6400 pilots. So they run around 11 pilots(NOT crews) per airplane. DAL has roughly 720 planes and 11,800 pilots. That works out to roughly 16 pilots per airplane.

So, we can already see that the DAL pilot contract creates MORE jobs(Keep in mind our augmentation requirements are contactual) then the SWA pilot contract. HOWEVER, some people on here complain non stop about poor pay and stagnation. So what do you think will happen if DAL pilots successfully obtain a contract which essentially is identical to the SWA pilot contract? Just sit back and think, because if you think we're experiencing stagnation now you can expect even more for SWA pilot contract.

There will be a perceived need by the pilot group to "give more at the office", and it will be sold to us. My guess is widebody orders tied to further outsourcing and sub par pay increases.

That's true. Eventually I'll be shoved off the 7ER.

My guess is they've decided it's "better" to send our passengers on GOL. :rolleyes:

The Guyanese government apparently designated Carribean Airlines as their Flag carrier and Suriname Airways announced non stop service to JFK as well out of GEO. EZ jet has already gone out of business with their 767-200 service. Also the Trinidadian government is subsidizing Carribean's fuel. We can't compete and our own government is allowing it to happen.

Wonderful.

I have no idea what the applicable laws are, or whether we have an open skies agreement, or what rights Suriname has to carry people between the two countries, but something sounds wrong. Makes you wonder if the US owed a little something to Guyana, and this was a little offset for SEA-HND. Unfounded, wild speculation on my part, of course, but how does this happen?

But on the 88/90, which flies a near identical mission to SWAs 737 fleet, we are running about 4.9-4.8 crews vs SWAs 5.6 crews.

And that's set to go lower if as they said in the crew planning newsletter they reduce staffing further on that jet even with more 90s coming.

But if we went up to SWAs 5.6, we could soon add almost 370 pilots alone just for the 88.

I'm not sure if the missions are near-identical. They also fly much longer legs than the 88/90 could ever fly. So maybe a mix of 88, 737, A320, and 757 missions. Maybe that mix gets them much higher utilization rates per airplane?

Johnson conveniently ignores the higher pilot requirements of Delta's international flying. Why does it seem like the data is always so skewed with some of these guys? Thanks for pointing out an actual apples to apples metric unlike Johnson.

Don't forget they have a little less than a 1/3rd of their fleet are B733s and 735s. Yeah they've got longer legs with a 737/738 but not everything the 90 does is ATL-BHM-ATL-GSO... ironically like our 738s seem to be doing? I've seen some 73 trips lately that'd make a 88 guy cringe.

Right now when you look at our fleet the 88 is around 4.9 crews going lower and the 320 sits around 5.6 and they're talking about displacing people on this next bid. So my bet is that both come down on this next AE which is below the SWA staffing but of course how much of that 6400 number is flying the line?

The 73N and 9 are higher around 7-7.5 but that's also because they're growth categories with more 739s coming and the 9 staffed for issues related to the 717 arriving. The 9 in particular is stated to be overstaffed on purpose, i.e. 7+ crews per jet is over staffing.

I'm not going to touch the ER/767 because of its mission profile but on the 330/777/765/744 we're running about 27 pilots per plane. But the one thing I need to go back and check is that from last August we ran 38 pilots on the 777, now we only run 31? That's over 125 guys removed from that thing. Scambo? Where art thou oh Scambo?