The eye Doc we liked dropped Davis. The new Doc says they're a pain. They tried 3 times to correctly make my bi-focals and they never did come out correct. Just had new ones made, we'll see how long and if they can get them correct.

Baja.

How Delta May Trim Its U.S. Tax Bill. (Hint: Europe) - Businessweek

Hey, this looks like it would be great for corporate profits and our profit sharing. Hopefully we can facilitate this and help Delta reduce the tax bill.

Ever since the JV agreement was signed as a six party agreement, they were supposed to end up with a 50/50 split of EASK's.

DAL was operating roughly 54-46% of the EASK's but had planned to growth to be "in the window" to comply. Then the European meltdown happened and the transatlantic flying started to become unprofitable. DAL drew down flying to match capacity with demand.... AF and KL did not. AF was viewed as a jobs creator for the French economy and the govt didn't want them to shrink and layoff more workers into the economy. UNSAT, IMHO... Business is business. Similar story with KL, but they did drawdown a little bit more than AF, but still not enough to match the DAL drawdown. RA doesn't want to lose money unless it's a strategic long term play.... Keeping up those North Atlantic numbers didn't fit any strategic plan.

So now DAL EASK's fall as a survival measure, not as a "screw those Delta Pilots" move. Economy still sucks, now AZ gets minority staked by the AF/KL Group, and added to the JV.

Who's side has to eat the AZ EASK's? We argued successfully that it should come out of the AF/KL side. So just as DAL EASK's could start climbing back towards a contractual balance, WHAM! DAL EASK's are back below the balance.

So here we are, nearing the end of the cure period, and they ain't gonna get back into the lower end of the balance. What happens next? A group grievance is filed when the cure period ends. We will win the grievance, it's a slam dunk. The not so clear answer is the remedy. You can't go back in time and fly that time, how any jobs were affected, how much harm has been done to our pilot group? There are many variables. Everyone here for the most part has ideas on what they think the value and solution is.

It will come down to what we think the company "would settle for out of court", or if we think an arbitrator would give us a better award or worse award than a settlement.

It's not about winning, that's a given here.. It's about extracting the most value and figuring out the cost of the risk.

I read the article. My take is that we may be looking at foreign crew bases. Am I way off on that impression?

Shiz, absent a few wrinkles in the timeline ;-), that is an excellent summary of the whole situation!

IMHO the company's motivation to get the Virgin Atlantic JV TA signed now, is to simplify a settlement on the TAJV at the end of March next year.

Cheers
George

Thanks Carl. So when we amended the JV agreement to add AZ and their applicable EASKs to the JV, what percentage of the EASKs under the JV were we actually doing at that time? Were we actually doing 50% at that time or were we doing some other amount and were planning to get to 50%?

IOW, did we go backwards or have we stayed about the same and never gained what was promised? Either way we don't have what we contractually should.

I have no clue. It sounded to me like they want assets in Amsterdam and the UK where taxes are lower. Not sure if we are considered assets. I don't think any of us have a clue what RA and the guys are planning the next 10 years.

Thanks shiz!! That's what I was looking for. This helped me understand the history on the issue a little better.

Where are the B's. No backdoor. A's were behind the backdoor 2 days ago.

No joke. I'm not a fan of PBS period, but does anyone know why this process takes SOOOOOO long? Should only take a few hours.