You best get all you can while you can. DAL has a very short memory. I have very little to show for my time there. You will live a long while after they are but a distant thought.

What seniority were you in category pre C2012 and now? That makes a difference.

I know I took a $5 pay cut going from the 88 to the 717. Last year I made $40k more than I had the year before on the 88. But that had a lot to do with a significant jump in seniority where I could hold the GSs and now some of the few WSs that come available. Don't know if I'll match that this year now that GSs are gone.

But I can tell you training and vacation pay too little, kills bidding. And last time I had CQ in a vacation month and basically had to give up a good schedule that month to make up for 9 days being blocked off the schedule but only paying 29 or 30 hours.

So I'm in the Atlanta crew room and I guess there's a bit of a alpa meet and greet and verbatim I hear: "so we ask guys, so how much of your W2 do you want tied to variable income?"

And then an emphatic explanation of why raise is better using the %s from C12 and jokingly said we've established it's for sale just how much. I was just listening in. Amused.

My point is this selling PS is much more than Internet fodder.

Would you care to elaborate?

Does this mean DALPA will publish some goals now?

I guess my question is if you are giving pilots what they want from the survey, why a sales pitch? Shouldn't be necessary, right?

Well, if you take the incredibly small sliver of the highly opinionated DL crew on this forum as "the will of the pilots", I think you do so at your peril.

I realize you weren't there at the time, but the irony of this whole Profit Sharing discussion is that when it was first introduced in LOA46 (and later massaged in LOA51), the majority of the pilots thought it was a joke. Mired in a string of massive annual losses, most pilots rolled their eyes when the union tried to point to Profit Sharing as a plus in what were otherwise hugely concessionary agreements. The common refrain was A) We'll never see any profits B) compensation shouldn't be tied to something that pilots have no control over and C) even if we ever do show a profit, Delta will find a way to cook the books to ensure we never see a dime.

Fast forward a decade and now something that the pilots generally scoffed at has become untouchable in some cases. I think it's great that we have benefitted with some great profits, but I think we did a lot of that while our main competitors were in the garbage can. I'm not sure that's the case anymore. I hope we continue to kick tail, but I'm not sure that's a guarantee. If we somehow converted it into a fixed 20-25% raise on day one plus whatever other raise in pay we had coming......I'd sure listen.

100% of us would listen. The point of all this PS discussion is that we believe DALPA will trade the profit sharing for a % raise equal to what we give up and sell it to us as a raise like they did in C2012.

I would love to give up PS in return for a 16-20% raise (what it is projected to be in 2016). However, that raise needs to come on top of any other contractual raise. So we are talking of a minimum of 30% DOS if they want to boot of off the PS plan.

Mebbe I'm too tainted by being in leadership in other organizations in the twilight of my previous career, but I want to see PS continued.

Even if you somehow could use mathematical genius and supernatural omniscience to convert it perfectly equitably into contractual wages, you lose the intrinsic benefit of ownership instilled by PS, as small as that may be. Instead, you convert it into an incentive to stretch hours in creative or not-so-creative ways.

And I'm new to this business, but from what I can read of history, failing to consider all income - contractual or not - to be at risk in this business seems unwise.

Profit sharing
 

I guess all this discussion of profit sharing has me a little bewildered. The question has to be asked.

If management wants to provide us more in hourly salary to return some of the profit sharing percentage. My rebuttal and hesitation would be to ask. Why would they be so gracious to offer us more money for this so called "at risk" compensation? Surely, they would have to realize that if things go south and the airline makes little or no profit that the current system is designed to protect them in a down economic environment.

Conversely, in a growth and earnings environment like we have now, profit sharing and the current percentage splits cost them a substantial amount. It will be very apparent to me, if profit sharing is reduced and offset by higher hourly wages that management is keenly aware they did so to save money over the long run.

Beware of those who offer gifts (in this case increases in pay) with our debt being reduced to nearly nothing in the next few year's I see LARGE profits and so does management! A 10% increase in pay rate may appear as a win however, the loss of profit sharing money could be in excess of any raise provide. Caveat emptor!

I agree. It is going to take a HUGE pay raise to make up for the profit sharing money and the normal raise we have coming under this next contract with record profits. If I was Delta mgmt., I would be trying to reduce the PS amount too..That is their job to get us to work for as little as possible.