I did as well, but a bit later...circa 2007. Northwest valued heavy international time, and I would imagine the new Delta does as well.

Curious as to why 4 reps would find this not satisfactory, being so great and all. You would think it would have been a slam dunk.

Not commenting on the LOA per se, but block hours are absolutely no indicator of net pilot jobs required. It takes far fewer pilots to fly US-Pacific point-to-point than to man the NRT hub.

And the race to a 9,000 pilot airline continues...

Why don't you ask the 4 reps? How many reps found it satisfactory? Can you give an example of something that passed 100%? Also, can you cut and paste where anyone referred to this agreement as a slam dunk?

I believe block hours are a key component in our contractual staffing formula.

Which must be why we are growing pilot wise?

Windows Surface 2 RT early 2014. Can we maybe get some decent bidding and training software now... please?

Saw the memo. Anyone know it the 2 will be better? I heard a better display, and maybe a back up battery in the keyboard. External flash drive should be nice. Just plug CQ in and go.

Don't know if we are getting keyboards. They are claiming 10 hour battery life... under what circumstances I don't know. Lots of potential there, let's see if DL can execute a decent tech rollout or if we'll be dealing with balky crapware and overly rigid device protocols.

Alright, since we're talking block hours I wanted to go back to this post from a few days ago (mind you it's discussing the 76-seater problem and not NRT) but that ain't no thing:

Okay, here's a question about that ^^

Say you have 50 763ERs flying 1 leg per day that's 8.1 +/- 0 hours per day, how many pilots do you by rule need flying the jets per day? Now let's increase the block hours by a random number like 46.914% or 47%. It'd be an increase of 69,000 block hours per year, 190 per day and it works out to be 11.9 +/- 0 hours per day/leg/crew. How many pilots do you need? So a 47% increase in block hours per day and per year yields... 0 additional pilots needed.

Okay, how about this, how about add 1 additional jet, to the fleet of 50, flying 8.1 +/- 0 hours per year. How many pilots do you need at a minimum now? So while a 47% increase in block hours gave you a 0 increase in pilots required, 1 jet gave you an increase of 2%. If it was Delta staffing a 765, it'd be like 25 pilots per jet. 1 jet matters.

But all of a sudden the 2012 crowd is smarter than the 2008 crowd and block hour ratios trumps fleet count. Unless you're trying to get me to vote yes on TA 2012, then 88 717s = 1000-1400 pilot jobs no matter how many block hours they fly but at the same time fleet counts don't matter just block hours, please standby as we twist ourselves into a

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/150/4...21d3228490.jpg

HND ++++

When I was on a sit in ATL, I spoke with a member of the eLink project team who was demonstrating the Surface. He had a keyboard. Of course that doesn't guarantee we will get them.

Based on Delta's tech history, we are probably in for the latter. :D