Agree from my personal experience. NWA has the Navy C9 sim contract. My IP was a retired NWA whale driver. He lived in MSP but commuted to DTW. I'm sure his QOL had to be worse as wx must have played into some interesting commutes every winter. Though in his defense I did not ask him why he did it.

And I think your second point is dead on no matter who you worked for. Everyone will choose the $$ if the pain is equal to what they currently do. Cant blame anybody. Just figure out where you fit.

I guess I should preface this, we have/had a lot of CVG pilots commuting to fly the ER because they wanted ER, but I don't even think for them money was the primary goal. So I am not saying that there are odd commutes that go on for someones personal reasons and that QOL is 100% the objective.

However, it is a major objective for most pilots. Of course we don't seperate reserve and line holders into seperate categories either. But if you bid ATL/SLC 767 or ATL/NYC ER, etc, because you'll hold a line in the summer, chances are you might not in the winter. So you need to wait a little longer to bid for it if you want a line year round and if you want it commutable year round, wait a bit longer.

Also, there can be a significant difference in having a line thats commutable to one thats not. And big planes don't always mean more money, especially with greenslips. I bet most 88 FOs are making a lot more a month than I am right now in 7ER reserve.

And if $$$ is king, isn't there less of an incentive now with the pay raises?

Bidding scare
 

Suggestion: Don't worry about what people say they're going to bid. A lot of them won't actually do it, especially with base/equipment shuffles on the horizon. Too much risk of getting a nasty surprise shortly after going to a month-long school. :eek:

And while this may not yet be a factor to some on the NWA side, say you decide you want ER because most to all trips start at least after 2pm and are a vast majority of the time backside commutable. And in some cases you can do 6 to 9 day trips that limit how many times you'll have to commute, say you have a tough commute like our DFW-ATL.

However, when MSP/DTW/SEA gets the ER, chances are it'll be both ER and domestic. So you may or may not have commutable trips 100% of the time.

Hence, why commuters sometimes are more sensitive and aim towards the 88 until they can hold a good line on the 73 then a good line on the 75 and good line on the ER and so forth.

I mean to each his own, but I wouldn't be surprised if some guys who bail off the 320 and 9 for "bigger" planes acctually end up making less money than the friends they left behind on the narrowbodies because of green and white slips.

Slippage. Its a great thing.

You guys are leaving out alot of info. There may very well be alot of NWA pilots moving to previous DAL bases but not necessarily by choice. If they move our aircraft around to each others bases then the new positions will be because of NWA aircraft in that base. For instance, i would prefer to stay in MEM because of the easy commute but if they yank the bus out of MEM guess what? I am going to go where the plane goes or where the new "easy" commute is. Same goes for DAL, if they move 777, or 767s to NWA bases and close or shrink previous DAL bases then what will those pilots do? Will they raid "OUR" bases? The whole argument is pointless, we dont know the details.

SEA will likely shift alot of previous NWA aircraft out to the east coast and those senior NWA pilots will either commute, retire, or bid other aircraft in SEA. The shift is coming and its of no fault of our own. Stop blaming and pointing fingers at each other, its like ****ing into the wind. ;)

Correct....but your earlier post alluded to the fact that we are *****ing about the lack of fences and that we never wanted/proposed/argued for them at begin with - that is absolutely false.

Hmmm, not really. What I was alluding to is that during the risk assessment phase, your MC evidently decided they were expendable.

Had they been a higher priority item, they might not have risked them in arbitration, and placed more emphasis on a negotiated solution. It might have been one of the few common items they had with the NWA side.

Nu

There is one consistency between NWA and Delta...Each group pi$$es and moans and the whole time no body really cares what the other thinks. We've got that in common.

Howw U Dooyinng
 

I think it's safe to say for some, the debate on whether specific Delta or NWA groups fared well will remain up until their fini flight. For the rest of us, there is no way this deal is going to change, so let the festivities commence, it is what it is, good, bad, ugly, but it certainly beats the divided they stand work environment at USAir, when if anything unity is needed for this next financial tsunami.

I've seen the planned changes, and are they expecting those to be new bases or will crews deadhead and then start their trip the subsequent day? Also for the ATL and JFK routings across the pond, are those patterns arising from those Delta bases chiefly one big chunk of days or are there a lot of 3 days to be had? For Asia flying there are few three days, the patterns are mostly 5+ plus days of flying, but if you luck out going out there and then flying south from NRT you stay roughly in a 1-2 time zone, which is nice, plus we've got laundry service at the hotel, so you don't have to haul around 5 plus days of clothes, and there are also small lockers to rent at the Narita hotel, I think the main hotel is pretty awesome.

Also from what I understand Delta does not have a reserve as a bid category you simply bid and the results are what they are, but does this mean that if I were senior enough to hold a line but I wanted to fly on reserve status I could pick that?

PS Brush up on your Japanese: Hai, ni beero, kudesai (yes, two beers, please) should be enough to get ya started. :D

PSS As we come together to become one, the biggest, baddest, bestest (my kid's like that word), gaggle of aviators let us rally immediately around the one thing we can all relate to. I'm not talking about sheepskins on the cockpit seats, or a relief tube in the cockpit, but something of a higher calling. Let us collectively commit to eliminating the Argentine Generalissimo style hat AND the double breasted suit that is soooo frigging (friggin?sp) ancient. We could at the minimum learn a lot from the Skycaps in both how they wear their hats and the lack of a "Hawaii Five O" crest on theirs----definitely a plus worthy of emulation. Solution, i'm thinking a beret, with a fin flash Delta widget, natch with ANOTHER set of wings pinned to the fin flash. Plus I gotta put wings on a shirt as well???? Obviously the idea of "more with less" never caught on, eh? Are the epaulets not enough of a tip off? Maybe if we changed the bars on the epaulets to being wider with sequins? Too whiny? I think not. For one, the illusion that passengers give a hoot about brand identity that is a fallacy foisted by Clothing Designer Nazis who want to make us buy their goofball getup, and the corporate-porn loving PA weenies. Sorry to burst management's bubble, but it's the cheapest ticket online not brand name that gets them into the seats. But hey, if we gotta dress up like we're extras in a movie that is set wayyy back in time, does the double-breasted come with a velcro option---that's gonna sound classy. See ya out there, buddies! :D

Placed more emphasis on a negotiated solution? Were you laughing at how ridiculous that statement is as you made that post?