tsquare

IMHO, we as DAL pilots are going to see little to nothing from the Virgin Atlantic JV. We will see some domestic growth, but that will be buried in the other growth that DAL sees in the coming years. That leaves international. THE reason for this alliance is Heathrow. Period. It is a slot controlled airport, and they ain't giving any of that to us. The only growth we will see internationally will be a 50/50 on additional LHR slots, and that's if we're lucky.

Purple Drank

wow. That's a lot of block time.

TOGA LK

Theoretically, according to you, it shouldn't cost a dime. It would be a good litmus test of their intentions on the left coast however. I agree there had been some growth out here, a lot of it is recovering routes we gave to Alaska several years back, but the absolute lack of any organic domestic operation of any significance is a bit unsettling.

Dorfman

yes and no. I have run against this in the past as well. In February I put most of my trips at the end of the month and in March I put them in the middle. I was passed over for a greenslip because of this.

When all you have is 5 day trips in category you can run up against this flying 75 hours a month.

tsquare

ummmm what?

gloopy

Oh man, that's a tall order to try and cement almost a year out from openers. Heck I thought nothing before noon on day one and a 16 hour or more long call was a slam dunk with our 117 negotiations, but we ended up with 10 and 13 and then gave back the 13.

And of course, and I hate using this because it seems like a cop out, but it depends on other things in the contract. Scope is, to me, the most important section. Its not just about RJ's of course. While we're almost busy counting our C2015 raises already, I'm way more concerned with the potential lack of compliance at the end of the balancing/cure period (coupled with no intention to ever comply) in the JV Scope. I'm deeply concerned at how the VA inclusion will end up playing out too. Then there's the Pacific, Gol/AeroMexico, etc.

Then there's "RJ's" or "small jet scope", which I also don't like to call it. If I crashed a birthday party at your house with 76 people could I get away with it by saying the vehicle that brought them there was "small"?

Heck, I don't even like the large corporate jet jobs that we gave up after winning a slam dunk grievance. Those were dang good jobs and IMO they belonged to us 100%. Correction…we won that grievance, so it wasn't just my opinion; we owned those jobs. And best case we sold them for a trinket, worst case gave them away to help management save face or whatever. I would have worked with the company to address some unique concerns for those positions, but they needed to be DL pilot jobs. At the very least in the event we furlough. Instead we rolled over and gave those up to non union pilots flying work that was a massively clear contract violation. But no one else seemed to care.

Then there's the AS code share abuse that, while its correcting itself to some degree, is only doing so because of the decisions made by AS management. As far as we know, AS pilots are still the preferred lift providers by DL management. I would like to see that carve out tightened significantly. At the very least, to match what's going on now anyway. Another perfect "buy low" opportunity for us if we're serious about the section in the contract that defines what every other section in the contract applies to.

As to "RJ's", while "it depends" on many factors, I absolutely want to see meaningful reductions in the allowable number of 70 and 90 seat outsourced aircraft. Absolutely not one single aircraft larger than that (be on the lookout for some scam whereby its floated that 9000 seats of DCI on 100 seaters is better than 10000 seats on DCI in 50 or 70 seaters…I really hope we're not stupid enough to fall for that).

The most likely way to achieve the reductions would be to sunset provisions with DCI carriers that are always under staggered contracts anyway. I'd think that for the length of servie for the average contract (3-4 years) 50-100 existing DCI airframes in the large RJ category should be parked one way or another with absolutely nothing additional at DCI to replace them with. That is a minimum for me. And I absolutely expect to be significantly disappointed.

TOGA LK

Out west. I really do have to walk you to the water...

atpcliff

Anybody know anything about a Delta/Atlas Air partnership???

tsquare

Baby steps. Alaska didn't get all that flying overnight, and it won't come back overnight.... to say that nothing is going on is disingenuous though.

gloopy

What if AS cries uncle and comes grovelling to DL for the feed again? The AS code share abuse on the west coast was flagrant and massive. We were told there is no way we can do it, yet we're now doing it, and the big factor seems to be its pretty mission critical.

Its resolving itself, but only because of the decisions made by AS management. They could make different decisions anytime. I'd like our recent progress locked down in Section One and their ability to go back to the way it used to be eliminated and the code share needs to be constrained to where it is today at the absolute highest.

Our scope > AS management's latest round of decision making.