Originally Posted by Waves (Post 791261)

I don't know what SF is, but AMR used to have a couple of SP's They were the little short versions. My guess: SP Special Passenger model and SF Special Freight model. Just a guess though.

Originally Posted by silverfox (Post 791273)

Never heard of an SF. SP was Special Performance.

Originally Posted by satchip (Post 791242)

FT

A jug fills drop by drop.
Buddha

Originally Posted by Waves (Post 791266)

I flew with Bob a couple of times to Brazil. He was definitely set up. Bill Brown sold us out.

When Harry was traveling, he loved to come down early to the cockpit to chat with us. He always looked up the pilot's names before he came down and then addressed us by our names. A neat little trick. One time he was headed down the jet way and one of our FA's stopped him and said,"Sir, may I see some ID?" His response was, "Miss do you know who I am?" She quickly responded, "NO, I know who you look like. Now lets see some ID." True story.

I believe Harry was the one who coined the infamous phrase, "This acquisition [Pan Am] is the most highly researched acquisition in airline history." He did get canned for not playing ball, but he also took the money and ran. He was not well liked by the pilot group.

Originally Posted by satchip (Post 791244)

I've never understood why you guys call yourselves Vipers instead of Fighting Falcons, the official name of the F-16.

Originally Posted by Waves (Post 791276)

I remember that now. You're right. It was Special Performance. At that time, it was considered a super long range aircraft.

My bet on SF is still something concerning a freighter.

Edit: For whatever it's worth, I looked it up. An SF is a Special Freighter, and is handled by Israel Aircraft Industries.

Originally Posted by Bucking Bar (Post 791142)

Others have quantified scope bargaining credits. You would surely want official sources and it takes some work to obtain those. If you have access, the documents are the LOA 50 Arbitration Transcripts and NWA Zipline October 18, 2004. The numbers as best I recall them were $X00,000,000* for the changes in scope on the Delta side and a $15,000,000 credit for NWA's allowance of 110 50 seat RJ's. What later became Compass was first introduced in these 2004 negotiation of "credits" (their word, not mine).

Originally Posted by iceman49 (Post 791294)

HA also said the Pan Am pilots were contaminated and bad apples.

Originally Posted by alfaromeo (Post 791312)

Since I was at the bankruptcy hearings, every one of them, I don't have to look at the transcripts. What was mentioned was the economic benefits that DELTA says they would gain from the 79 seat jet issue (remember, Delta was asking for 200 79 seat jets, some people conveniently forget that little fact). It was never used as "bargaining credit". What happened at NWA in 2004 I have no idea.



You quote a single "industry analyst" who was not a member of the UCC. I have talked personally with the ALPA member of the UCC and he tells a much different story. Go look in section 1 under the merger scope. It mandates that Delta continue to fly the same amount of block hours following a merger. Parker said he would pay protect pilots. We said that our contract does not say pay the pilots, it says fly the block hours. Parker even tried to hatch up a scheme where he would put CRJ's from Comair at Delta to fly the block hours. In the end, our scope clause was a key factor in pushing the committee to go with standalone.



I guess you missed the part where I urged every pilot to view the negotiations as a business transaction because that is how the rest of the world views it. Within that business transaction, there are limits and those limits will have to be resolved within the union. That is just a fact. Maybe you are filthy rich, but I am not. When I go buy a car I have limits on what my budget is. Maybe I can get the six cylinder, maybe I can get the stereo, maybe I can get the luggage rack. In the end I have to make decisions on what I can fit within the amount of money I have to spend on a car. So either I am tool beholden to the car dealers IBB tactics or I am just a person who has finite resources. I will let you decide on that.

The pilot contract will also be a finite amount of money. We all want the amount to be higher but Delta will gross $30B in revenue this year. Our contract will be some number below $30B in value. If you figure that Delta has to pay for fuel, airplanes, other employees, and other essentials. The number available to pilots starts to get bracketed in to some range pretty quickly. That is where pilots have to view this as a business transaction the most. You see the APA try to justify their contract demands on the basis of inflation, CEO salary, housing prices, etc. That is an emotional argument that they are losing with the NMB right now. They are parked in nowhere land. If we are going to win, we have to continue to view this as a business transaction.

If we increase that number from present then some of that increase can go to any or all sections of our contract. Pilots and their MEC will have to work out where those increases go in an orderly fashion. That is how labor contracts have been negotiated since the formation of unions. Decisions have to be made. So you bring up some research done by eggheads 30 or 40 years ago and try to infer that we are falling off their slippery slope. That is just nuts. What you are saying is the only way to avoid IBB trap is to pretend that you have unlimited resources and work from that assumption. That is clearly the way to caught up in an emotional train wreck when the world collapses around these irrational assumptions.

Now I love how you slip into the victim mentality. Oh, we sold you out for scope. Well how about my pension? What was that sold for? Overall, I have taken paycuts equal to an entire RJ crew. What was that sold for? You continue to try to point to the logic of the situation that you were screwed so others could get more. If you feel put upon by the last few years take a number. The reality of the situation was that the MEC faced a tough choice. Accept the unacceptable changes to scope or have our contract completely rejected.

If our contract was rejected, it would have been highly likely that the situation at Delta would have deteriorated as the uncertainty surrounding the airline grew. Could the pilots strike? Who would lend exit financing? Who would sign lease deals with Delta? In that chaos that followed it is highly likely that an offer like US Air would have been taken. Our scope clause that protected block hours would have been rejected along with the entire contract. In that case the entire MD-88 fleet is gone. 1500 jobs gone. The company ripped apart by Doug Parker. Not to mention all of the flight attendants, gate agents, etc, people we have known and worked with for 20 years or more.

So the MEC accepted the unacceptable in view of the broader picture. The rest of our scope language was maintained. The company righted itself and started to grow. They hired 700 new pilots, including you. There were many widebody upgrades as we increased 777, 767-400, and ER flying. The union made a deliberate effort to change the labor dynamic to create a better place to work and also improve our attractiveness to investors. The union then made a deliberate effort to facilitate consolidation to create a stronger industry competitor. All of these efforts have paid off for those junior pilots that you claim are victims of the evil seniors. You got pretty close to the same amount of stock from this transaction as I did. I had 20+ years with the company and you had 1. Wow, you got screwed.

What you want to do is to try to go back in time and cherry pick out one part of one decision and paint that as a deliberate attack on you, the unhired pilot. That is both irrational and unfair. Without those difficult choices you would never have had a job at Delta. Without the continued difficult choices you would be furloughed right now.

I said in my previous post that I try to stay out of scope because it always comes back to the same arguments and here we go again. This time it is the full circle that puts some eggheads idea of screwing labor right into a vast conspiracy to screw former ASA pilots who now have a secure job at Delta and $50,000 of merger stock. So if you think I need to learn from the past, then you do too. Decisions are not made in a void, and scope was not traded for some pay raise or a week of vacation. Your attempts to paint it as such are just wrong. You are not a victim and quit playing the part.

You should get yourself on the MEC and learn ricky tick how tough decisions have to be made. It is far easier to sit on the sidelines and toss hand grenades when you don't have to live with the results of your webboard posts.