Was it Grinstein that ordered the 777LRs, or Anderson?

 

Think it was 2006, wasn't it a conversion from previous orders?

 

The 777 ER's were first ordered by Leo Mullen, and then he said he'd sell them if we didn't capitulate on the pay rates. He did park the first two for a week or so to negotiate with DALPA, but the finally settled (we had 3B6 then) on a pay rate of...about $265/hr. (if I recall), that was in 1998 or so.

I think the LR's were already ordered before Richard showed up, might have been Jerry's order, might have gone all the way back to Leo's order.

I've got a good memory...but it's short!

 

While it is true that whoever is top dog today won't be tomorrow, anything that involves usair will be a disaster. For the last 25-30 years everything they've touched they've screwed up. They have put up some impressive numbers for Wall Street of late, but that was with pay and benefits of a start up. Let's see how the integration goes and how they do going forward paying close to industry rates to their work groups. I don't think Parker is up for the job. He's been use to having below avg rates for years at America west and way below rates at usair. Anyone can make a profit with labor costs 30-40% below their competitors.

 

My bet Timbo is if Delta could get it's hands on new 773s they'd do it. I don't think they're like "I only buy Chevys and never will buy Fords" they're just committed to making revenue.

The 777 by the way is 20 years old today.



Boeing 777 and F-16.

 

Duder,

Thanks for the quick replay about the MSP hotels... much appreciated!

 

iceman and Timbo... that sounds about right. Now that I think about it, I recall a poster on the wall when I was in newhire class in 2007 showing the 777LR and the 737-700.

Given that Airbus has gotten 2 in a row, it's probably time for Boeing to win one... unless they fubar it again.

 

I'm pretty sure Richard could get brand new 777-300's today if he wants to pay full price, but he has said many, many times, he won't spend $300 Million for them. He got those 10 A330's pretty cheap. He said he'd like got buy some -used- 777-3's, if he could find some for less than $80 Mill each.

Maybe Emirates will sell us their older ones?

 

RA seems to have the buying habits of a cheap airline pilot.

That's why my wife would say if she cared about airliner acquisitions.

 

Block hours per pilot isn't a measure of efficiency in this business...

The widgets we make are called ASMs
The cost to make the widgets is CASM

Delta's CASM is indeed higher than Southwest's CASM.
But to effectively measure pilot productivity we need to measure the pilot portion of CASM.
Guess what we are still more efficient as Southwest when it comes to the pilot portion of production.
Yes, that's right, the pilot portion of CASM at Delta is lower than the pilot portion of CASM at Southwest.

Why is this?
Let's look at "digging"

The workers at company A produce 25 billable digging hours per week.
The workers at company B produce 20 billable digging hours per week.

Clearly the workers at company A are more efficient, right?
If you measure billable digging hours you'd be right.

What if I told you the workers at company A use a shovel and the workers at company B use a Caterpillar D9.

Now who is more efficient?
Does it matter if Company B pays their D9 drivers more than the shovel wielders at company A?

So yes, using sailings "metric" of block hours, we are less productive than the others. But using the metric based on the currency the company accountants use - ASM - we are not. And that's the one that matters...

Cheers
George


Extra credit homework for sailing:
What is the pilot portion of CASM at Delta, what is it at WN?
How many ASMs are produced per pilot block hour at Delta, how many at WN?