Those are all pilot numbers. I don't have a source for regular or reserve only. I suspect a few phone calls to the company could get them.

 

What's a high yellow? Where can one select that option?

 

Nothing worse than a rolling thunder attempt gone haywire.

 

What is interesting is the 2007 hires are perhaps in the position to have the best careers anyone has seen at Delta. Advancement is going to be rapid for a long time. The front loading of the retirement plan via the merger stock is absolutely huge from a retirement standpoint. 150k upfront is easily worth 5 or 6% in yearly contributions over a 30 year career.

 

My Scoop speaks for me!

Clearly, the Reserve system's trip into a Marxist-Leninist bent post 9/11 was punitive to many pilots that had already pre-paid their dues under the old system, and were subsequently unable to get any credit for their seniority, the value of which plummeted to zero. Our devalued rights, which were converted into some new crap called RAW currency, which was given freely to all. Which made a new hire just as much of a prince or a peasant as anyone else, and so it was that ftb and other newhires got to think of themselves as equally entitled to flying as someone who HAD been furloughed, HAD lost the game of LOW/HIGH yellows when it was their turn, but now couldn't use their seniority at all to compete for flying anymore. We got shafted, but their perspective on this matter was based on the then-existing system of 2007.

So, to the newhires, past dues that went unrewarded went completely unnoticed.

When we finally designed and implemented something better, they 2007 guys cry bitter tears over the fact that there is LITTLE seniority bias to the Reserve system (emphasis on "little"), and they can't bear the thought of losing the artificial equality they had come to live under, never mind that it was an accident of a history they didn't share in. They sure don't mind the fact that a junior guy flies a trip they don't want, but they can't bear the idea of a senior guy sitting a little longer in a different raw bucket. It messes up their brains, this slightly unequal screw-job, even though it is entirely appropriate, and STILL fails to properly pay us back.

My thinking is that when all you're obsessed about is making sure we're all getting screwed equally, you're in the wrong game. When we design a system, as we have that is CLEARLY much better in the aggregate for Reserves we win. And when we design it with a LITTLE seniority bias, we are only doing what is right.

ftb's problem isn't that he got screwed when he was junior (he didn't), is that he has too little respect for those of us that got screwed when we were junior AND when we were more senior.

 

Disclaimer.....not complaining here.

Where do you come up with 150K merger stock? Are you assuming that is the value of the merger stock if we did not sell it and still hold it? I'll bet almost all of us dumped that long ago. I sold out at $15/share for about 50K.

 

I'm an 07 hire and I love the reserve system. The RAW score deal I thought was idiotic and virtually impossible to know what to expect. The new system does kind of suck when you are junior, but it's much better than the old one IMO.

 

I would say the 14 hires are gonna be the winners. Those guys will upgrade faster than 07 guys got off reserve. 00-01 hires will always win the prize for the crappiest career movement. I don't really know what to say other than sorry. I respect you guys for sticking it out cuz I probably would have thrown in the towel and started a trucking company.

 

Right. Just so we're straight, I'm not making any blanket statements about 2007 guys, or about ftb. He's a smart guy and a great APC contributor. I'm only mentioning him by name because he's very vocal on this topic. And wrong, IMO.

I would argue that almost everyone I know acknowledges your point: the current system is better than in 2007. It's debatable whether it's good enough, but it's pretty clearly better.

The only sort of complaints I see about the bucket system is that sometimes, when you're not staffed too tight, a senior guy that's in the same bucket gets to stay home for a brief reprieve.

I think we agree he deserves it.

 

That doesn't answer the question. I get it that narrobody is Delta's *****. But that still doesn't tell me how many guys are regularly being driven to 99 hours.