I didn't mean to come across as arrogant. I just mean that I see no reason to buy back what will eventually come our way anyway. The RJ experiment is over... especially here at DAL. Yes they are slightly bigger, but look at UAL where they still have a million of the 50 seaters. I think the battle underlying all of this is control of those larger airframes as the 50s become more and more economically unfeasible. Hmmmmm where have I heard that line of logic before?

I'm a line dog. I have no political connections whatsoever.

 

Respectfully disagree.

As any ex America West pilot will tell you, they had a difficult but valid sim. No, they didn't bother with complex approaches and IFR procedures like Alaska.

Instead, you flew an old school 73-1 in a constant airspeed climb and descents while doing constant rate turns between two heading bugs. Then you would slow the airspeed while climbing while continuing to do this. 250 down to 210 and then 160.

One might ask, ***? A good portion of the candidates would stall in the slow airspeed climb with the turns. They were hoping they would. Because here is where they could see their instincts. Did they recover? Did they do it naturally?

Basically, how did they perform under stress and resolve it. As you said, "does it reveal secret pilot potential." Naw. Valuable insight into the skills and critical thinking. Yes

In conclusion. The people we hire today Gloopy are gonna be sitting next to you. We are screening pilots with less and less experience than the 90 and 2000 hires. Still think it is a bad idea?

 

The reason management is currently giving to explain the downgrades is the lack of qualified pilots applying to Endeavor. They have stated that Delta cannot execute their business plan with the current situation.

I think we are going to see each major identify a most favored nation/regional. They want to be able to say to a prospective pilot that if you want to work for Delta, United, or American you need to start out at our designated regional. I predict American will follow suit shortly but I think they will offer better terms. The chess game for new hires is here.

 

Excellent.

 

You are a well spoken line dog. We agree

 

I really appreciate that kind sir. I really do.

 

Its not a "bad" idea, its just a worthless idea. The scenario you describe is a theoretical shortcut to attempt to hire those with basic flying instincts, which most pilots have anyway, including those that don't do well flying a new aircraft for the first time ever. Yet the instant the gouge gets out there, everyone knows it, sees it coming and practices it. Airlines need to incorporate that into their training programs, heavens forbid if it adds a couple sim periods in these days of cost cutting by any means necessary.

DL has had exceptional success with non sim interviews. If sim interviews are really a clear and significant advantage, it should be easy to prove it. Yet airlines at every level have sim interviews or not, with no discernible difference.

 

Exactly correct. Management worked long and hard to set up the current outsourcing regime the way they like it, and they're not going to let it go without a fight, economics be damned. They already tried swapping out 50 seaters for a smaller number of 76 seaters (and 717s). That failed to help much with staffing but it DID give them the carrot they needed to entice the Endeavor pilots into voting in their "cost reset."

Now they just need to figure out how to staff their cost reset regional. This new flow is round 1. It won't staff Endeavor enough to grow it, but it might buy them some time. Round 2 will be lobbying Congress for further exemptions to the 1500 hour rule under some pie-in-the-sky promise of superior extra training at 9E & assurances of super-selective DL hiring. Round 3 is going to be sponsoring flight training scholarships in exchange for 5-8 yrs of indentured servitude at 9E. Round 4 is going to be asking DALPA for scope relief on next-Gen 90 seaters once they're sufficiently proven, in exchange for retiring a larger number of CRJ-700s (yet another cost reset opportunity!). It will be sold as a further restriction of DCI when it's really just yet another lifeline keeping it afloat.

When I hear guys like tsquare* say they're not willing to spend one red cent on recapturing scope, what I really hear (and what I think management really hears) is that they're also not willing to give up one red cent of negotiating capital that comes from preserving the status quo. If throwing management another lifeline to save their outsourcing scheme can net another 3833, I'm doubtful that tsquare et al is willing to pass over an easy 3833 to ensure outsourcing dies a natural death.

If we want to see the outsourcing scheme die, it's not going to be enough to just wait for economics to take their natural course - management will keep it on life support by any means necessary, because that's the way this generation of management was raised. If we want to see it die, we're going to have to kill it. We'll need a plan, and we'll need to act decisively while the economic factors are in our favor.

*Not picking on you tsquare, it's been a common sentiment on here recently.

 

The board was taken out of the box and unfolded, but no real moves have taken place. Yet.

They need significant pay raises and work rule improvements as well as some "outside the box" things like maybe tuition reimbursement (only a stop gap that will eventually increase the cost of learning to fly as all subsidies eventually do), hotels for all training, signing bonuses, retention bonuses, perhaps training contracts although that is a double edged sword that often hurts their efforts more in the long run.

And all this still does nothing to fix the very core issue: a lack of student pilots who will eventually become 1500 hour pilots so they can go to a regional then a major. DL had such an infrastructure once and it was actually doing a pretty good job. But, true to B-school form, they bought high and sold low, losing control in the process.

 

+1 good post. See I don't always give you a hard time.