Really Drank? It's pretty obvious who you are. Welcome back anyway... I guess.

 

honey, I'm home! Did you miss me?

No sense hiding. Smart guys (and you) were bound to figure it out.

 

Who's Purple Drank? : )

 

Good points over all. But its critical to acknowledge in that particular instance the incredible arrogance of the ASA/CMR leaderships. While they feigned innocence about "the integrity of the process" that very thing was their thinly veiled cover to "go for it" with a blatant seniority grab. Once green lighted, a staple would have been the floor, so why not take a chance at more? That is one reason why it was so vehemently (and justifiably) opposed.

There can never, ever, be any step toward "unity" with regional airlines that give even a theoretical chance at arbitration or anything greater than a staple. Ironically, under almost every scenario, even a pre-agreed upon staple gives them that chance because once you're in you're in and can then sue for more.

The solution needs to be 100% from the mainline side to recapture at the bottom end at this point. Even PCL wend behind our backs and negotiated directly with DL management for DAL scope and hiring preferences up to and including top secret "vault letters" and that can not be rewarded or treated as leverage. We need to reduce large RJ's at regionals bring that lift here unilaterally at this point. We have already given a lot to DCI that has no leverage and is imploding as it is. I'm in favor of hiring an equivalent number of pilots to the large RJ's we re-insource, but we're basically doing that anyway.

 

I'm already planning for my displacement to the -800.

There are worse things than flying back and forth to islands in the Caribbean.

 

So reading between the lines on the update, the 333IGWs are the 744 replacement. No mention of sailing's ever talked about delivery delay on them.

 

I'm not the naive one here.

If the RJs had not been allowed to fly via scope than DC9 sized aircraft would have had to be ordered at some point.

If we did not allow so many of our passengers to be flown on other airlines it would change the needs for what airplanes were ordered.

The JVs are taking jobs on the high end and we allow it via scope.

We need better language and we need to strongly enforce it.

 

Funny they ended up with the highest block hour costs in the industry.

 

Short answer: no, of course not.

Long answer: that depends. first of all we are faced with an inexcapable version of exactly that scenario at all levels of our flying in every theatre. The yield trashers/capacity dumpers are about to go bat dung crazy flooding markets and from EK to JB they are counting on DL to gift them capacity to keep our YoY profit growth up. It is a collision course with reality and we will either have to fight that battle or slowly go away.

True, but the rub with this particular scenario was the panic chaotic urgency which it came about. Literally a coupld days after releasing bids based on keeping them, and hours before the bid closed, 1/4 of the fleet was suddenly parked. In the same breath they talk about growth in Asia.

Now, maybe we're parking 4 (soon all) 747's to replace all that lift with smaller planes like the 330. Fine, whatever. Less hourly pay but way more pilot jobs. But that doesn't seem to be the case because that's a lot of lift to be parked immediately, and only possibly replaced by future RFP's many years down the road. Those 330's that were supposed to be "growth" suddenly aren't anymore. What's next?

Are we shrinking to accomodate EK/etc growth? Making room for some failed pathetic government welfare case like Skymark by piling on our corporate charity at our pilots' expense? What's going on? Its a theatre poised for massive growth (much of it fake Keynesian growth that won't pan out, but there most certainlly is still growth potential there) or are we funding irrational competitors with capacity charity at our expense?

With all the "suddenly available" lift from the Atlantic seasonal pull down, how will that lift be replaced in time for the next upswing when we will only have a couple more 330's by then? Or do we plan on yielding that to our "partners" too? It seems like we could be getting set up for a huge in our face "grieve it, punk!" production balance where they just continue to gut the cure period evem more instead of actually curing anything, and then say "what are you going to do about it?" at the end and use it as leverage to baseline down whatever remedy they end up offering because hey, at least its something?


Displacing those positions would have a similar training waterfall effect as staffing them, at least for a while. Not to mention potential no freeze double bids, paid moves, etc.

The timing of this announcement, blatantly sugar coated on the front end with "good news" about first time captains and all that, just smells like a rat the more you sniff it. Something it up and this is only a small part of it.

 

Just call and ask anyone in the 330 program. First jet now will come in May. That's why no bids for the new jets yet.