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.

 

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?

 

I guess this is my thought, the newly arriving jets could be 100% replacement, they could be growth jets or not even 100% replacements. Only time will tell what they are and I don't care if you're RA or a nobody like me, there is no way to predict the future.

But if they're growth jets, even if just a tad, and we're not hiring, then our pilots per jet will decrease. Thus we are more productive, just like EB said in the earnings call.

And even if we are hiring, I vow to watch the pilots per jet number all the way through to the next contract. We can have pilots coming on board and still decrease that number.

 

Perhaps you should read my entire post. What convienently ignore is that SWA pilots are more productive. If you want SWA pay, management will want SWA work rules. A SWA pilot contract for Delta pilots will mean less jobs. But you won't admit that even though you know it's true.

 

But....Dalpa said SWA pay by 2015. Will the work rules then change? If not, then why would they make an apples to oranges comparison, I.e. Pay check does not mean pay rates?