acl65pilot

A lot of what you have heard is dead on. The shift of the 400's to NYC would be done for one reason. It would cost DAL to much to hire NWA workers to service the 330's initially. As they are IAM , all of the their a/c need to be serviced and cleaned by their people. That adds lots of bucks to any a/c movement. If it costs too much you may see that happen in the short term. It also holds true for all of the other movements.
SEA appears to be happening.
The hiring is on hold for the SLI and figuring out what they will do with NWA. If there needs to be people "moved" around, it is a lot easier to do that now, than after we have new hires on the list that would be senior to someone that is on the SLI. Needless to say we will be looking to grown the pilot ranks, but a few things need to happen. I suspect that we will see classes before March. (We need to get people trained before the Summer 09 schedule)
Now lets hope that all of the stuff we are hearing is not smoke and mirrors for the DOJ..

FWIW I flew a 757 to IND and we were FULL both ways. Now that used to be an RJ route with an occasional 88. That is good for all of us!

Carl Spackler

Again folks, I hate to be the wet blanket here, but a lot of folks are just not paying attention to reality. Here is part of a story regarding Southwest Airlines:

"After reporting its first loss in 17 years last week, Southwest announced it is cutting capacity 5% to 6% in early 2009. The ongoing economic crises and volatility in oil prices are creating “an environment where it makes no sense to be growing,” said Southwest CEO Gary Kelly.

In a quarterly filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, Southwest also reported its fuel hedging contracts have lost $2 billion in value, falling from $2.5 billion on Sept. 30 to $550 million as of Oct. 15."

Note Gary's use of the word "crises"...plural for crisis!

One of the big under-reported stories is the amount of loss being experienced by many airlines' fuel hedge portfolios. Yet another hit in a business that is totally economic dependent.

Here's my blunt prediction. DAL, NWA and the new DAL will not grow. They will shrink. They will have to. Every single airline is presently TOO BIG. Gary Kelly is the only one that seems to be admitting it thus far.

Carl

iaflyer

I give SWA a lot of credit for making good financial decisions, but they are a 100% domestic carrier. Also, I would bet that Southwest carries a higher percentage of passengers who are price sensitive than Delta. Delta is not a domestic only carrier either - I forget the exact figure, but 40% or above of our traffic is international, which may not have the same hit to traffic.

On my flight to Moscow last month, only 3 passengers out the entire airplane were American looking. Now, I didn't speak to all 220+ pax, but it was clearly not an American crowd traveling.

Delta goes to a lot of places where their economies are doing just fine, thank you.

Superpilot92

Could be but the difference between SWA and NWA/DAL is that SWA has been growing significantly over the past 8 years while NWA and DAL have been shrunk already. Both NWA and Dal are already pretty lean after the bankruptcies and cutbacks. On top of that the regionals grew the routes over the past few years and like acl65 said, alot of the routes that were flown by the regionals during the cutbacks are now needing bigger (read mainline ) planes. Its going to be interesting, We'll see soon enough.

Superdad

Being at the bottom of DAL's list I would sure like to see hiring. However, being highly sympathetic to those who have been furloughed and are being furloughed in the industry now, I would hate to see DAL hire for the summer and then need to furlough a year later. It might be smarter for DAL to do as others do and simply pay overtime to cover the schedule rather than hire pilots.

BigGuns

After the merger I’m sure the DAL Code will shrink. I think you will see more RJ's parked. The mainline fleet is stretched fairly thin. There are HUGED overlaps in the 9 RJ carriers. That's where you will see BIG CUTS.

Cycle Pilot

Comparing DAL and SWA is like comparing apples to oranges. Yes, the airlines do compete in some markets domestically, but we are becoming a much bigger international airline. I also agree with iaflyer... much more of SWA's passengers are more sensitive to the economic troubles than DAL's passengers. I'm not saying that the economy isn't going to hurt Delta. I'm sure it will, but I don't think it's going to hurt us as badly since our business is more diversified. Also, like somebody said above, our business is already pretty lean since coming out of bankruptcy. I think there will be some cuts, but mainly on the RJ side of the house. Heck, I think half of our Fall schedule reduction was RJ's!

That all being said... Southwest has a great employee group and management. I'm sure they're making the best decision for their airline right now. That doesn't mean their decision is the right one for Delta, though.

Bigflya

Gents,

I have heard many of the same rumors of A/C movement. Remember that we cannot fly each others A/C until we are one operating certificate. That will be 12 -18 months from DCC according to our mgmt. I also hear that the SEA ER guys will need to pack a large bag as they will do the inter-Asia flying before coming home. Probably like Africa but with more legs. Also a BOS ER base to make many of the Northern Europe 3 man a two man crew saving that last 40 mins of flying on to NYC. A few q's since I am not knowledgable on the specifics of our contract.

With all the proposed A/C movement, how will that effect us junior NYC-ER guys?

Can we move bases with the jets since we have the training or is it only if we can hold it?

How does excess or displacement bids work or come into play? Thanks and here's to not having to fly the Shuttle. I can't do it but I respect those that can.

RockyBoy

CNBC had a piece with Ray Niedl and Hunter Kaey. They both said the exact same thing. Kaey actually said if he had to buy airline stock he would buy Delta over ANY airline currently out there. He also said if he were to stay away from any of the carriers it would be Southwest because of the domestic drop in traffic and the price sensitivity of their customer base. Most of the other LCC's at least do some Carribbean, Mexico, or Canada to mix it up. Good clip, not sure if you can pull it up on CNBC or not.


Here's the clip. After watching it again, Ray didn't really say much it was Hunter Kaey that said most of it.

Video- CNBC.com

Cycle Pilot

Wow! Very interesting clip from CNBC. Thanks for sharing that with us!