I don't know, I vote then it's an Airbus order. I just see A321W written on every ramp I go to now.

I don't doubt for a minute that pay is the #1 issue with pilots.

I'd like more pay too, so, how about let's return to caps and then increase staffing in every category and I can jump from 80% on the 88 to say 70% on the 737 and it's scary trim wheel. I'd make more money. I'm down with that, so i... what? No? Guys just want to fly 100 hours a month? What are we, Continental?

My problem is that if C2012 taught us anything is that we can get a pay raise, no problemo, we just need to figure out how we pay for it. How much more productivity, lower profit sharing and scope concessions do we want to do?

And do we all want to be that guy in the crewroom who says "yeah my wife ran off with the tennis instructor... but on the bright side I got 130 hours of credit on 98 hours of block flying, not bad!" [not made up]

In regard to the latest letter from the MEC Chair:

Great opening. I thought we we going to learn the MEC was going to discuss restoration, improvements, etc.

I hoped that the goal was to open early and demand something that was not greedy, but in the range of the DAL CEO's pay increase of 40+%. 40 plus % cannot be greedy if the CEO achieved it after stating to a group of pilots (an LCA meeting) that he hoped the pilots would not be greedy in C2012, and then immediately takes that amount after ALPA settled. The chairman clearly states (I am paraphrasing) is, "we hear you, you want $$"

OK, so I can work less and play more! OORAH! I was excited thinking I was going to see leadership from my MEC.

Then the real message of the letter came out: the DPA is scourge. The DPA is a group of pilots: 4000+ DAL pilots. So the real adversary (management) is not a scourge, but 4000+ pilots. Or perhaps more generously, 4000+ pilots are stupid (please give me a better explanation), because they have bought into the lies(?) of the pilots leading this "scourge" organization.

Or is the MEC Chair making excuses for the next contract. If only the DPA was not there, we really would have achieved what the CEO got!

Didn't we hear that ALPA got the message entering C2012? I am not knocking/debating C2012 (voted NO, but that is in the past), but sounds like the same verse.

Seriously, ALPA and DPA both have valid issues. 4000 plus pilots would have signed a card if they thought ALPA was a valid path. On the other hand, if the DPA was a clear choice we would have moved on. We, the line pilots, need to evaluate whether ALPA is going to back to the business of really advancing the profession, or if brand X is a better choice to do so. We need to do this sans discussions of personalities.

So here is my response to the MEC Chair's letter: I am renewing my long expired card. If he thinks line pilots are a scourge, not the management teams that have us so down, then ***. I'm just one member, and now I want this discussion.

DT

My thoughts? That he and you are obliviously deaf that the membership is fed up, not sure what to do next, but willing to give the alternative a try, not yet sure if DPA is better or worse than ALPA. Go ahead and spew as much vitriol as you want - I have spent more time doing ALPA volunteer work than you have spent as a pilot.

johnso doesn't spew vitriol. He just wayyyyyy overdoes the positive view thing.

Never mind.

No the DPA is not 4000+pilots. The DPA is a creation of Tim Caplinger. 4000+ pilots may have hitched a ride on his star but there is no DPA. It's a placeholder. It's 3 letters put together with an idea that was discussed on this very forum. It's a name, it's not people, it's not pilots, it's not unified and it's only goal has been 50% +1 since day one. Half a pilot group isn't unity. Half a pilot group is three years worth of commercials designed to sell you a new panacea that somehow will fix everyone's issues. Promise.

The letter doesn't attack you or any other pilot. It mentions the DPA as an entity a mythical unicorn wrapped up inside an enigma. It's a set of Tupperware boxes in the kitchen of a guy who lives in Tampa. A guy who used his last major post to show all of us that it was about him and his furlough again. If you are taking it personally then you don't understand what you've signed up for. Responding to printed lies isn't an attack on you, it's what you do when you repeatedly get donkey punched on the internet for 3 freakin' years.

Lets just all stop with the sound bites about $30,000 oil paintings. It was 1985 for *****'s sake. 10,000 Polaroids tapped together? Digital photos didn't exist. It probably made sense in 1985 and it doesn't make sense today and everyone knows it. The resolution is already out there to fix it. Check one off the list boys, you made a difference, Woot!

The DPA constitution is unmanageable in it's current form. You can't fix it after it's in place because it requires the non-existent structure that doesn't exist and a vote that's nearly impossible to achieve. The DPA committees may be made up of former ALPA volunteers or it may be made up of pilots who didn't get their way and have decided that revenge will be delivered. Delivered with more FPL and higher dues, but that's skip that part because it doesn't sell well. I'm also unsure about dues check off working on day one. I'm 98.3% sure that I physically signed a checkoff card and that this isn't just contract magic.

Even the guys over at AICA have a structure with leaders and a BoD and they have been around for something like 20 years, but that's not long in DPA years. Seham along with the infamous AMFA group McCormick out of Laconia, NH and a former American Airlines pilot have been trying to derail the APA for 20 years. If you haven't heard, the Seham guys took APA out of ALPA and then have been trying to get another independent in. You may notice a theme?Let's sidebar for a second and recognize that Seham and the McCormick Advisory Group do this for a living. The American Independence Cockpit Alliance is headquartered in New Hampshire. What are American pilots doing in NH? Seham speaks at lawyer conferences on how to use forums just like this to organize labor and spends a great deal of time focusing on airline unions and the web boards they use.

There's a lot more to this than ALPA sucks and these are ALPAs faults. There isn't a viable structure to the new group. It's a house of cards. The DPA Security Chairman has repeatedly said that they will clean house. No current ALPA volunteer can remain. There is no "the current reps will remain because they love the Delta pilots" the DPA spokespeople have made it clear on many many occasions that a full and complete cleaning of the house is required. The current DPA committees are filled with guys that have an axe to grind. Anyone in NY knows 2 of the guys I'm talking about and one of them had his job saved by ALPA for doing very stupid stuff while out sick on television and that is exactly why there is a good faith clause today.

The few guys that have put their names on a wall at the TCA have issues. Some of them may be legitimate but they spend so much time discrediting the group and the pilots and the volunteers that no one cares anymore. I don't want to hear Sol say one more thing about ALPA Admin Manual Section 40. He thinks regional airlines control my density. Would the Comair pilots say that they had managed to use their amazing conflict of interest super powers over the Delta MEC to create C2012? Me thinks not.

This isn't about you or the guy with the DPA lanyard on. The ALPA you speak of in the letter isn't attacking pilots as individuals, it's responding to Tim Caplinger and the DPA as an entity. It's a boogeyman. It's a threat. It's a secret society. It's a 2 year old throwing a temper tantrum.

"If you don't get what I'm demanding then I'm going to join the DPA and that will show you. Nah Nah Nah!"

Tim is the one name on every email and text I get. I said it the other day and I'll say it again. He's been hitting the bees nest for 3+ years. You can't keep calling people out and then not expect them to show up at some point. He's been calling ALPA out for years. He is solely responsible for the response he gets and everything that comes with it. If ALPA spend $10 billion responding to him, that's what he cost all of us. He very publicly did this on a public website and signed his name. This is all after he said at the beginning that he wouldn't air our dirty laundry in public. That's all he does. The UPU is using Caplingers documents word for word they aren't even creating their own documents. The UPU is a zerox machine. The JetBlue management team used DPA material to help squash their pilot union.

The DPA seems almost giddy about helping other unions destroy ALPA. It's gone beyond the DPA (and you) helping the Delta pilots. It has spread to other airlines in an effort to destroy ALPA. How does helping JetBlue and United getting rid of ALPA help the Delta pilots? It doesn't. The DPA is anti ALPA, not pro Delta pilot. It may have been at some point but it crossed the line when it started helping other airlines go after ALPA. That doesn't help those airlines get better representation, it destroys ALPA and with that goes US aviation.

Everyone and I mean every one of us has an issue with ALPA at some point. Every single one of us can not get our way* every single day. The majority decisions wins and you aren't always in the majority. Do you run away and burn down the building or do you recognize you just didn't convince people you were right this time?
*Exception: My daughter.

The DPA is no one. It is no thing. It's a PO Box that Tim Capligner uses. He has some help. Those guys don't have elected positions. They have an agenda. You are part of a charade. Tim wants no union. The proof is in the constitution and every other document that is being used to create the DPA. It's masked by sound bites and a list of talking points that repeat like whatever you'd call a broken record today if they existed.

I say 3 years of division is too long. C2012 was the DPA/ALPA vote. It's done. Let's move on and get moving together. Nearly as may guys voted against C2K as they did C2012. Some of those guys will always vote no. It's not the DPA and its not ALPA, it's them.

AICA has been going against the APA for 20 years. USAPA is going on 10 years. These aren't all the same but they have something in common. They all start with an angry pilot who talks to a lawyer. We can't afford a 10-20 year DPA v ALPA battle, but the lawyers can.

That was a lot of words, hitmefurl.

Now then, what can you answer to the major faults at DALPA that have provided the greatest boost to the DPA in the last few years? What would you say are the primary causes to more than half our active pilots filling out and sending in cards in support of DPA?

Where we are today is more a call to task for DALPA to step it up and revise its method of operation than it is answering to a passionate dude from TPA, right?

I want to see DALPA improve from this, not pass blame. Why don't you address the faults and seek correction instead of passing it off to some overemotional guy?

You want me to come up with a black and white cause and effect scenario in response to 3-4 years of a DPA advertising campaign designed for short attention spans? I'm trying to tell you to look through the flight director. The structure they have built so far is not sufficient to do the job. Skip the DPA vs ALPA rhetoric and look at the DPA constitution. It's flawed and thats the roadmap for all of us. This forum prides itself on taking apart ALPA documents and looking for errors and loopholes. It's time it turned itself to the DPA documents. They are rife with mistakes.

I'm trying to look at it from a real point of view that if it were to happen whats' next. Not a list of promises that Tim promises not to repeat. You might not like the one you have but the alternative is far from ready for prime time and this still assumes the IBT or others don't show up looking for equal representational status.

..............................

Yep- all the while management pays themselves obscene bonuses and cashes out millions in stock options. CK2012 lead to a sharp increase in the stock price making shareholders short term wealthy. Why can't the pilots be short term wealthy?