We will repeat a long term pattern in negotiations and open for beyond the moon. The company will respond by scheduling a meeting once ever two or 3 months. Sometime in 2016 negotiations will heat up and then in early 2017 in a 24 hour period they will get more done then the previous 4 years and we will have a contract.

Not if the company is printing money by then (Pelosibama's economy notwithstanding) and the MEC chairman walks into the office with a document that says "C2K +30%... any questions?" and walks out straight to the picket line.

I agree that 2012 will not bear much fruit as we will have a presidential election late in the year. If we have a shift in power 2013 will be a wash, but 2017 seems to be quite a long time to obtain a contract.

OK, I was actually thinking that maybe Anderson and gang were using a page out of Crandall's playbook and saw a means to put the hurt on the competition, while strenghening our position. If the story is true, either way it hurts AA. They either lose their partner in Asia which is huge for them, or they have to spend money they don't have to protect that feed.

And you plan on getting around the Railway Labor Act how?

P.S. C2k plus 30 percent would almost double current pay rates. Combined with the work rule changes requiring the company to hire 2000 plus pilots your looking at at least 2 Billion a year in additional costs to the company. I have no doubt your ideas on the contract will be close to our opener and that is why it will take years before we make even minor progress.

What's your plan if the company is just muddling through? Losing money?:confused:

Maybe we ought to learn from the past a little bit and find a different way to capture value. I don't know what that is, but I do know what we've done historically has always had us out of sync with the company or economy.

From 1986-1990 we were locked in a low gain B scale contract. The company boomed. We grew, but pay didn't follow profits.
From 1990-1996 we had a decent deal. The company and economy tanked. 602 of our pilots were furloughed.
From 1996-2000 we got a concessionary contract. The company boomed. We got scraps.
From 2000-2004 we had the best overall book in the industry. The company and economy tanked. 1310 pilots were furloughed, leading up to LOA 46 and a record concessionary contract.
From 2004-2007 we fought to survive as the company failed. We took even greater concessions and lost our pension in the failure. 2008 we merged, and extracted 6% of the company stock for pilots, plus restored 18% of our wages over time. The company is muddling along, paying a small profit sharing one year, but losing money the next, and projected to lose money, then not make much for the next 2 years.

How are you going to walk in and demand C2K + 30%? Do you even want to do that considering the history above?

I believe we have to find different ways. I don't know what they are, but I'm tired of seeing this repetitive pattern of failure.

Oh, I edited out your political statement. Please don't get our thread locked...:eek:

WOW! Is it going to change things that much? I haven't been paying attention to much lately, but if that's true I would think the Airlines will fight the new rules to the death. Seems to me they wouldn't want anything to do with it, or they will want a very slow implemetation.

Sailingfun or ACL65, any thoughts?

I do not see DAL needing to hire 2000 pilots for the new rule changes. We have a max scheduled 13 hr day and have a sliding scale much like they are proposing.

What I do see, at least from the leaked reports is up to 11 hrs of flight time a day. That will drive the company to request some changes in the PWA. (read we have some leverage) I do not think that they will tinker with 100 in 30 or 300 in 3 or 1000 in 1 yr, so overall the staffing will be close to the same. We may need to see a few more crews on the narrow bodies as they 9 hr overnight would be gone, but overall DAL is way ahead of the curve on this.

I believe that Sailing was referring to C2K +30 being 2 billion dollars worth of gains for the group.
That would be nice, and given that number 2017 does seem like a realistic number. The issue with negotiating to 2017 is that the economy will be entering another period of contraction about then. I hope that we see growth in 2011-2015. There are many landmines that could totally derail that,but historically you see four to six years of growth.

We have a few years to the opener, and will have a better idea of reality at that time, but for now we need to educate the group!

By new rules I meant going back to contract 2k work rules. Not the new flight time regulation coming. If we worked under contract 2k work rules we would need to hire a huge number of pilots. Just going back to a real CAP instead of the near cap less system we have today would be a large number of new jobs.

I believe what he meant was the return to our pre-C2K Line of Time construction and reserve rules. They wouldn't add 2000 pilots, but lowering the cap to 75 hours and the inefficiencies of LOT/reserve construction would be a high number. Remember also we're signficantly overstaffed for winter flying, so the numbers would be even less.