It Was The Third of June Another Sleepy Dusty Delta Day......

 

It was the third of June,
On that summer's day
When I became a man
At the hands of a girl almost twice my age

And she came to me
Just like a morning sun
And it wasn't so much her words as such
As the way they were sung
It was the way they were sung

 

https://thepointsguy.com/news/delta-...ts-hub-cities/

 

But still not a pilot base.

 

pwa 1.b.23

 

I'm lost. Other than locals wanting to drive to work, what significance does being a "hub" or "domicile" have? Isn't Seattle (or at least wasn't) still not a "hub"? How does this impact our PWA?

 

PWA 1.B.23 defines a "hub" as having monthly average of at least 100 Delta schedule flight departures per day. It lists the hubs as ATL, CVG, DTW, JFK, LGA, LAX, MSP, SEA, SLC.

Delta reduced flights out of CVG back around 2015-2017 and referred to CVG as a "focus city" around that same time.

There was a caveat of SEA not being considered a hub with regards to the Alaska Marketing Agreement.

I think when folks say "domicile" I think they really mean "base". The PWA 2.A.31 defines base as "location a pilot is assigned".

So BOS is now a Hub due to average number of Delta departures, its a FA base, but not a Pilot base.

 

I get all that and thanks for the recap but other than SEA and the now mostly irrelevant Alaska deal, there seems to be nothing relevant to how and where Delta bases pilots. There's nothing preventing or requiring a pilot base in the PWA that I can find. Hence my point is there's no leverage to cause what may seem like an obvious city to become a base or a threshold for number of operations. We are at the whim of the company so until there's a financial incentive to open or close bases we are stuck with our status quo. BOS and CVG seem like obvious examples to an uninformed line guy. But that's just it, I'm largely uninformed as to the reasoning about when, where, and which aircraft are right for our bases.

Am I missing something that we have that compels them to make changes? The VBs are a no go for me because we have too many unknowns. How many VBs, what amount of flying, which route from which bid packages could be poached, is international the next move, etc. My opinion is that we just have to go with the decisions made and have little, if any, input. The A220 in SLC gives me pause and makes me wonder if we ever get the full truth and if that truth is temporary. My real fear is the unforeseen and unintended consequences.

 

There’s not much to this sound bite. A Delta hub for scope purposes is defined in the PWA. The only real connection to the definition is with the AS codeshare, which doesn’t exist anymore. “Hub-to-hub” for domestic codeshare is defined in 1.D.

“Pilot bases” are purely at the whim of management. There is no compelling language.

I feel it was a real mistake not even trying VBs, on a trial basis. The software was there, the MCO commuters bid, it was all set. We could have pulled it down after a few months data. Now it will never happen.

Your open questions won’t be answered. There was a chance VBs could have been good, they could have been bad. Because of the persistent pessimism by many pilots, the fear of them bad will preclude even trying them out to see if it was good.

“The company can always open a base whenever they want!”-The company doesn’t want to pay for the MD and move benefits if a new base doesn’t work. The risk/reward for them currently favors deadhead+hotels, otherwise the business case would make them open more bases. Seems VBs with the pull-down provision would have been middle ground: little risk for them, little risk for us.

 

I don’t think you are missing anything because I don’t think we have anything to compel them to change.

I’m sure the only thing that changes the calculus is when a certain number of delayed/cancelled flights due to no reserves, plus cost of DH’ing folks, plus the thousands of hotel rooms each month in BOS becomes more costly than just opening a pilot base.