After reading Paul's presentation (and substituting what I thought were the correct words for the stenographer's errors) a few things really stood out:

50 seaters were going away, 717s were coming - unarguable. Both were key financial drivers to an upgaged business plan.

DAL has taken the steps to de-commoditize each seat and differentiate the value of each ticket sold to maximize profitability-that takes some doing and it is a lot more involved than just throwing money at the issue. The same can be said for baggage handling...Bravo!

They are talking about annuitizing the pension obligations - this will virtually remove pensions as a balance sheet issue and ultimately contribute close to $300M/year to the bottom line. This doesn't do anything for me personally, but it removes the risk from frozen pension holders.

Trainer has already produced a .10/gal fuel savings...that alone can be the difference between profit and loss for the northeast competitive environment.

The forward looking guidance puts a pin in stock value of about $50/share. At which time DAL wants (maybe) to be viewed as investment grade or be on par with investment grade industries. So, dividend value might add another $10/share...If you are focused on share price. So we are talking about $60/share two years out (roughly).

Seattle expansion and NY maturity 2 years out gives two cost centers for future upward guidance...For Paul's future presentations. Add to that the 50 seaters will be at the sustainable level and all 717s will be on line...

The desert salvage yard has been a profit center as well...I haven't tracked which fleets get the most benefit from this. Maybe someone else has good info on this.

Bottom line C15 better be a whopper. On the DALPA silence issue, maybe, just maybe, they have had to assist/facilitate with all of the above items in order to help position the company for our benefit. Without memrat, they better be doing God's work!

Great post. That being said, do you think Richard would be as silent if he were MEC chairman?

Just a point on trainer. Management has promised it will turn a profit next quarter every quarter. So far their predictions have been wrong. The 10 cent per gallon fuel savings applies to all jet fuel in the NE. The production at trainer has pushed the price down for everyone. Sadly that gives us no competitive advantage as all airlines are enjoying that 10 cent reduction. We have however shouldered over half a billion in costs to cut the price for everyone and taken on a long term potentially very costly EPA liability.

So Tsquare you believe if Richard were MEC chairman right now he would be silent?

Richard is never silent. He states his goals. He lays out a plan. He.measures his progress. And he wins.

You worship him and yet you refuse to benchmark his leadership style.

Our silence ensures we are.not even on managements plate.

Mad Dog Rumors & Facts
 

Just got back from my first trip of Mad Dog IOE, and boy, have you guys been pulling the wool over my eyes! For years I've been hearing "The Mad Dog is a worthless piece of crap" and "Rube Goldberg was a McDonnell Douglas engineer" and "Mad Dog don't care, she's so nasty." It only took me 4 days to realize that the Mad Dog is in fact a docile, reliable, well-behaved gentleman's airplane! I can only surmise that rumors to the contrary were started by junior guys trying keep senior bubbas off the airplane. In the interest of correcting the record and salvaging a much-maligned airplane's reputation, I present the following:

Mad Dog Rumors and Facts

Rumor: Mad Dog trips involve 7 legs a day followed by 10 hour overnights in Huntsville and Greenboro.
Fact: I flew between 1 & 3 legs a day, and had long layovers in DEN & DCA. Mad Dog trips are so cake I was able to eke 2 days use out of each shirt!

Rumor: The Mad Dog is uncomfortably hot in summer.
Fact: This rumor was clearly started by pasty MSP crews. The Mad Dog has a lovely tropical climate similar to some of my favorite spots in the world such as Thailand, Mexico, & the Caribbean.

Rumor: The Mad Dog is an unreliable maintenance queen.
Fact: In four days we had one MEL, and zero malfunctions. The check airman assured me this is very typical. I'm pretty sure his little smile was not sarcasm, just satisfaction at flying the best airplane Boeing ever made.

Rumor: The Mad Dog is busy in the right seat before takeoff.
Fact: With practice, a three-armed FO can knock out pushback items, engine start, after engine start, reading the WDR, setting thrust & speed bugs, taxi items, runway update & change items, delayed engine start, after delayed engine start, and before takeoff items and associated checklists in no more than 7-10 minutes of intense labor. It helps if you're crosseyed like me, you can keep one eye on what you're doing and one eye on where the CA is taxiing, throwing out "clear rights" & flipping lights on & off where appropriate.

Rumor: The Mad Dog is busy in the right seat after takeoff.
Fact: Heck, you don't even really use that third arm very often when airborne. When you're pilot flying, all you gotta do is fly the airplane...plus run ignition & anti-ice every time you go through a wisp of a cloud, do half the PM flows where the switches are on your side of the cockpit, and program the box. It's not like you're using your left hand for anything else, it has autothrottles for pete's sake - & they work great, +/- 20 kts!

Rumor: The Mad Dog's VNAV doesn't work well.
Fact: It works extremely well in keeping you from going up or down if you don't really want to. If you REALLY want to change altitudes, you gotta tell it with half a dozen key strokes, executes, & MCP button mashes. And once it's going, you just gotta let it run. I set up for the FRDMM2 arrival into DCA at FL310, set 6000 in the MCP, & then visited the lav, ate some lunch, took a nap, & when I woke up we were at 6000 feet on downwind for Runway 1! Again, the CA assured me this is perfectly typical.

Rumor: The Mad Dog's thrust reversers are impossible to deploy symmetrically.
Fact: This one is actually true, but I find that one engine at 1.1 EPR and the other at 1.9 slows you just as well as both of them at 1.6. Trust me, I tried this.

Rumor: The Mad Dog's brakes will embarrass you.
Fact: This is actually a matter of technique. The technique I like best is to really get on the brakes early, heat em up real good good, then yell "you got it!" at 60 knots and smirk as the CA shimmies, squeals, shudders, and chatters those puppies all the way to the gate. At that point you turn to him and say "I dunno skipper, they worked great for me!"

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eoNW9Ae9R_...970b-500wi.jpg

I've come to realize that the Mad Dog, much like the Honey Badger and the NYC crew base, is not "so nasty," it's just maligned and misunderstood. I've now seen the light, and am even starting to wonder why aren't all compasses mounted behind the pilots and read with a series of mirrors? It just makes sense. New hires considering bidding the Mad Dog, especially in NYC, should definitely do so. You'll thank me later.

That is difficult to answer. You cannot argue that there have been gains contractually. Is that silence? In fairness also, there have been items that were concessionary. That said, isn't the real question whether those gains have been big enough or the concessions small enough?

117 operational changes required a meeting of the minds at some point. I was fine with status quo, but IMO, the LOA was a positive. Donatelli's original letter was miscalculated on the question of lean overs...a single issue that was resolved by grass roots upheaval.

IMO, the LOA makes room for continued greenslipping. This increases my bottom line. But as they say, the problem with greenslips is you have to fly them.

LOL. :)

Give it more than a trip for her to really wear on ya.

Are you implying C2012 enabled Delta to bring the 717s onboard? I know C2012 enabled Delta to place many more 76 seat aircraft at our regionals.

From the presentation: grow the airline at slightly less than the rate of GDP and keep our cost below the rate of inflation on a unit basis.

There's the company opener for C15: 3/3/3/3 or so. Think we will get to see the survey results?

True statement. In return for making the Company's voluntary place to reduce 50-seaters both required and permanent and for requiring that total DCI block hours be cut should mainline domestic hours fall below a certain floor. And more pilots protected against furlough.