I don't think we pay $330 million for a 777. A billion a year would be much more than 3, I would guess 6 to 8.

Thanks alfa. Something to shoot for, plus 2-3%. :)

New K,

UPS recently announced plans to furlough 300 pilots. To my knowledge 80-90 are scheduled to hit the street in May. :(

Yeah. I saw their thread on the Cargo forum. But, I thought the guys who left NWA had more people behind them. :(

What a weird industry, this is aweful news...Maybe they will flow-down to UPS drivers. I read somewhere UPS is looking to Hire 1000s of drivers in the next few years.. The article said a UPS driver earns an average of 75K/year....

TYG

I think that paying it down is a great idea. Shows some smart thinking right there - debt is cheap now, but when interest rates rise, our debt might be hard to refinance in the future.

Huh...so the ER would fly both. Where would those non-Extended range aircraft move to?

A furloughed (DAL) buddy of mine has been flying for FedEx ever since 2002. He's hearing similar rumors and is thinking about coming back to DAL. He was never asked to resign his seniority with Delta.

Nowhere - the ATL ER category would basically be combining the ATL ER base and the ATL 767 base. (well, unless there is less flying in ATL on the 757/767 in the future). It's easier for the company to staff during IROPS when all the 757/767 flying is in the same category.

Heyas Lunch,

It's pretty clear that there is an ulterior motive in Alfa's issue regarding the Rig Grievance. Out of all the screwed up issues that we have right now, he seems pretty focused on this rather obscure remnant.

First of all, who really cares? Do ANY of you south guys REALLY care what this is about? Of those who care, how many would just say "ahh, it's just those nutty north guys again...they got some bees in their pantyhose again about something...just them them finish hassling about it, and it will be done". The balance would say "well, let it run it's course. Of course if there is no merit to it, and the arbitrator will just say so".

No, it's pretty clear that Alfa has some kind of personal stake in the outcome of this. No one else, except a north guy, would give two craps about it.

I certainly don't believe it's about the money it costs to grieve it. They just blew a tremendous amount of cash on a MEC meeting in MCO (during spring break) that could have been just as easily done at the Thunderbird in MSP. I also don't believe this has anything to do with the "standing" of the DAL CA people in front of an arbitrator, because it can EASILY be written off as a northside issue.

There is absolutely no harm in letting it progress. By impeding it, this only serves to further the perception that representation of northside issues by the MEC officers is lip service only.

Point is, one of the promises made was that grievances filed prior to the merging of the two MECs would be handed by northside pilots as northside issues. Now it's said that isn't happening, and when KW departed he laid out the who, why, where, when, and how, along with complete records of who said what when (he was always VERY good about that) that shows this isn't true.

If the north side wins the grievance, the company owes them a fair amount of change. If they don't no big deal. It wouldn't cost any south guy one nickel for anything, which makes it all the more curious why the north guys have to fight the company AND the union over this. It is quite understandable that the south guys don't want to get involved...it's not their issue...but to actively block pilots who just wanted to be paid the same as other pilots on the same property is just crazy.

Fortunately, LM IS a politician, otherwise he wouldn't be the MEC Chair or going on a gladhandling tour of the north (fortunately, northside guys are REALLY good about followup, so just silky words aren't enough to placate them for long). He has certainly trimmed his sails to the prevailing political winds. Maybe that's whats got a certain segment of the southside true believers so upset.

Nu