Dalad,

I couldn't agree more and you put it a lot more eloquently than I ever could.

Roadkill and daldude,

I was in no way trying to belittle or make light of your (and many others) situation and apologize if I came across that way. Dalad summed it up pretty well. I took a slightly different path but we must be pretty close in seniority. As an '88 hire I upgraded to the left seat in 2001 almost exactly 13 years to the day. I've been displaced back a few times thru my career so far but when the music stopped I was very lucky to be where I was.

Hopefully things will improve in the next couple of years.

Denny

 

whoops I mixed up dalad and daldude heh. Youz guys sorted it out though

Surprising, and well said. The seniority system rewards folks differently for doing the same job (virtually). This is usually an indicator for an unfair practice (witness women and minorities in workplace progress), but we all accept it because it's a way to do it we've all agreed on, and there USED TO BE an expectation that it would all work out evenly in the end as we all aged. That is no longer true.

I am amazed every time I see MORE power given to seniority these days... if ever there was a time to even the playing field for lifestyle and expectations, it would be now, but instead we continue to broaden the gap between haves and have-nots with various boosts to seniority bidding power. Every single scrap that makes it down to the bottom now, no matter how small, someone above says, "Hey that should have been MY scrap, I'm senior!" Of course, it's kind of understandable as HE has been waiting for better scraps for a long time too...

I understand Emirates breaks their bidding up into 6 cycles of 2 months each. The bid group is broken up into 6 sub-groups. Every 2 months their position rotates as to which group bids first. Within your GROUP, your seniority matters. So if you're senior you ALWAYS get best pick of what your group gets, even if your group is bidding last. However, if you're junior, you at least have 2-4 months of the year where you might get something decent, you're not the waterboy every day of your life forever. This seems to me to be on to something, a more equitable distribution of lifestyle at least. Your seniority still gives you the #1 important power of bidding category (aircraft, where you live/fly, and your relative seniority in that category), but doesn't take EVERYTHING from those below.

Problem is, when the system breaks and there is slow or no upwards movement, every guy in the entire pyramid feels he hasn't gotten what he SHOULD over the last couple years after paying his dues all the way there-- and is that much more likely to fight and claw over every scrap that makes it to him! It's a Ponzi scheme with only one winner when it breaks, as it has.

I could be wrong on it being Emirates doing this, but it's still a good system/point. I think if your replaced the word "junior" with "woman" or "guy who's been doing the same job as everyone else for 15 years vs. 25" and then tried to justify our system to someone, the glaring inequities and lack of meaningful justification would become embarrassingly obvious.

 

Career progression has always been a crap shoot, and none of it is in your (our) control.

It's actaully a great argument for Longevity Pay!

Where's T Square? You heard it here first!

Right off the top of my head, I can think of several reasons the Lost Boys are in such bad shape:

1. 9-11 and subsequent furloughs
2. Airline Bankruptcies and shrinkage
3. Age 65 and 5 years of stagnation
4. The market crash of 2008 which lead to...
5. Industry consolodation, where 5+7=10 in terms of pilot jobs
6. Fuel prices, causing a slow economy, and more airline shrikage
7. Europe's economy, killing a lot of our trans-atlantic flying

What'd I miss?

Bottom line; the last 12 years have sucked, for everyone, but especially for the ones on the bottom of the list.

 

Yeah... I'm still looking for anything to avoid doing taxes...
can you tell?

 

8. One less warm body up front

- Last flights -
Delta L10 (2001), 727 (2003)
NWA 727 (2003), DC10 (2007), 742 (2007), 74F (2009)

 

DAL
Council: 001
City: Bloomington
Date: April 8, 2013


New Aircraft: Delta is pursuing an order for 8–12 wide-body aircraft for delivery starting in 2015. These will be used for fly from West Coast (SEA/LAX) to Asia (HKG, PVG, PEK) with the ability to over-fly NRT/HND.

Hiring: We anticipate a nominal amount of hiring in 2014; currently estimating 60 per month January–June, then 20 per month

(Also, a preemptive "kiss my arse" to anyone who wants to lecture me on reposting already disseminated information in case this has already been covered.)

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

 

Am I the only one who is really upset by our UPPER Management because the lack of hiring. Listen as a very bottom guy I want hiring but I am more concerned with giving up our lead among all majors but a short sighted decision to not hire. We are a world class airline yet someone decides we cannot hire so we don't. I think the blame needs to fall squarley on RA EB and even SD. If we need to hire it is imperative for SD to say so and make it happen. That is why he is in the position he is in. If our BOD is saying no hiring that shows me how completly utterly useless, overpaid, out of touch, and moronic they are. We are very close to squandering the years of customer loyalty and good will we all have worked very hard to build. If we are running out of pilots the 3rd weekend of April on many fleets something is wrong.
I hope this summer goes ok because if it does not we may have ruined our brand long time after working so hard to get it right.
Take care everyone

 

I agree but I have no fears that any flights will be cancelled this summer, even without hiring. They can use reserves more and there will be many, many, many greenslips given out if they get short. They have done the math, that costs them less than hiring.

Come next fall, if/when they reduce flying for the Winter Schedule, they'll go back to having reservs that only fly 20-30 hours a month.

 

Absolutely, 100% agree. It appears to me they are so focused on a 2 billion profit and bump in stock price that we are crewing at razor thin staffing for summer. Now take pilots from the 9 & md88 for 717 training I see some ugly delay/ cancellation issues arising this summer. I HOPE I AM WRONG! Would hate too see all our hard work building brand loyalty lost because of a lack of 300-500 pilots not hired 12 months early! Now back to the masters.

 

I agree with you - you take those points you made, add in a modification to the TLV for the M88 or other shorted fleets like they did a few years ago. Poof: Summer '13 flying covered.