We all knew the 747's were going to be retired (why the wasted capital on the lie flats, though?). I am glad the company is being proactive in getting rid of non-profit making equipment and thinning non profitable routes (I just hope what they say is true and their real reason is not the outsourcing).

But I am surprised at the quick decision to immediately pull down Atlantic flying and get rid of the 400's. I do not believe for one second this management team made this decision in one day. It has been in the works. In business normally a knee jerk/one day BIG decision will get you slaughtered. RA does not work that way unless he sees a way to kill 10 birds with this one stone. Contract Leverage? J/V compliance? or Show DALPA he is the Alpha Dog? Who knows. From what I see or am led to believe, DALPA was not part of this constructive process.

I think it is long overdue, DALPA needs to stop playing buddy buddy or business partner with the company. The company could care less about route compliance.

TEN

 

This is not a lawsuit. There are no judges. This would be a grievance. The system board of adjustment does it or a neutral arbitrator.

 

And do what?

I am not advocating one way or the other here, but I keep seeing this from the crowd. OK... tell me how you would get what it is that we need with a (for certain) adversarial relationship, because your statement says to me that you are absolutely in the anti-engagement camp. Just show me the way to get me more money and more time off, get the violations solved in a timely manner, (because waiting for several years to have them resolved is a big fat fail in my book). and I will get right on that train with ya.

 

The plan according to the two quoted letters is to increase not pull down the Atlantic flying.

 

I think I have been consistent in my statements regarding the compliance. For the record I will state it again. When we are at the time limit, and there is violation, a grievance should be filed.

But.... there is nothing in the contract that I am aware of that defines remedy. So how do you get the codes pulled?

 

The arbitrator has broad discretion to design any remedy he feels is equitable. All we have to do is ask that the codes be pulled. He can accept that remedy or he can come up with another one. It could be all-cash or anything in between. It would be up to him.

 

The 747 guys (A,s for sure maybe not B,s) have a full frozen retirement. They will not take a 100% paycut by any stretch of the imagination. I don't understand why any of them would continue to work as they near 65. I know I'd take an early out if I was in their shoes. However I'm not them and it is totally up to them.

 

Going to school on the Airbus is going to weigh on their minds.
I wouldn't want to do it if I was 63 years old. Some will, some won't.
Or they could go to school on the smaller Boeings but that would mean changing bases. I wouldn't want to go to any long course school that close to retirement. What a pain.

 

Sailing,

The memo says specifically says the transatlantic JV will grow by 3%, not as much as originally planned. Nowhere does it say that Delta will grow by 3%. We are shifting aircraft from the Atlantic to the pacific. On the surface the imbalance looks to get worse. What then?

 

To be honest, with regards to this AE, none of this talk about Atlantic and Pacific flying make any sense to me.

These are issues they had to know about months ago. The AE came out two weeks ago, and all of a sudden they are parking big aircraft.

To me, it seems more likely that the initial results of this AE indicated that they were going to have trouble staffing the new airplanes they have coming. Look at the awards. The bottom 737 captain is almost at 8900. That's closer in seniority to a new hire than he is to us in the middle of the list. (It would have gone more junior if they had awarded the 8 747 captain spots they had announced.)

How many 737-900's are left to be delivered? How many 717's are still on the way? Plus, how many 321's & 330's do we have coming?

From where I sit, it seems to me that the parking of the 747's is more of a result of a staffing problem than anything else.

It's the first thing they need to do to stop people from bidding off the 330.

Prediction: Next on the accelerated chopping block -- 757's.