Pretty sure non-members do NOT have to pay assessments.

When I got the ALPA brief during my new-hire orientation in 2008, they told us that we could either join the union and pay our dues or not join the union and pay our assessments.

Either way, we pay the same amount of money to ALPA.

I was riding the jumpseat once of a 88 Captain who was a non-member. I cannot quote exactly why he was, he just hadn't paid the dues back a while ago. When the union called they gave him the option to come back whole but it'd be $100,000+ or something along those lines. So it wasn't worth it, so he stayed non-member. Does that sound possible?

Give me a break, it was like 7am on an ATL-LGA commute back in my ER days.

Can someone explain the S2 pass to me? How many per year and what is their advantage? I think NWA had a similiar pass we called vacation passes but I am just trying to make sense of all our travel benefits.

Thanks

First we are a closed agency shop now. We were not that way for Delta's entire history. There was a time when pilots could opt out and not pay an assessment. That is not the case today as we are a closed agency shop.

Also FtB, that is correct. You must pay all back dues to become a member in good standing.

Yes, they do. They don't pay "full" dues but instead pay a contract maintenance fee. The maintenance fees covers those expenses germane to collective bargaining. Full dues are 1.95%, the maintenance fee varies but is probably around 1.85%.

Delta Psych Eval for FNWA Pilots:

Psychiatrist: Tell me about how you met your wife?

Ferd: I remember when we first met. It was during the war. I was in the Air Force stationed in Drambui, off the Barbary coast. I used to hang out at the Magumba bar. It was a rough place, the seediest dive on the wharf.
Populated with every reject and cut-throat from Bombay to Calcutta. Its worse than Detroit. The mood in the place was downright ugly. You wouldn't walk in there unless you knew how to use your fists. You could count
on a fight breaking out almost every night. ( fight between two women breaks out. Chairs are crashed . . .) ( Saturday Night Fever music starts to play when juke box is clobbered) I didn't go there that night to fall in love I just dropped in for a couple of drinks. But, suddenly there she was. I was captivated, entranced. It hit me like a thunderbolt. I had to ask the
guy next to me to pinch me to make sure I wasn't dreaming.

You, your husband/wife, and children get 6 S2 passes a year each. An S2 pass is good for one calendar day of travel. Normal Delta non-rev employees use S3 to travel, and most of the regionals are S3C, parents are S3B, so if you use a S2, you will be higher on the standby list than most everyone. When you use an S2, you are still listed among other S2s by hire date.

You can use them anytime - they renew on your hire date (at Delta, I know NWA has two dates, don't know which they use). You select if you want to use an S2 when you check in at a kiosk or with an agent.

Just remember to mention that you have a drinking problem (leading man raises drink to mouth and misses).

We're renting a condo at the beach, it has like 100 movies, includnig Airplane! I threw it in without permission. I hadn't seen it in a long long time. I was laughing so hard. It felt good. We had watched Cold Mountain the night before, I don't think I laughed all day after that damn waste of time; here's a well told story where things gets worse, gets more worse, then really worse, and then it ends worse. Go figure, a common man's and woman's tale of the civil war would be hell.

Airplane! Laugh. The Jaws opening scene, the 707 that sounds like a DC-7, the hot flight attendant that nearly kills that girl with her guitar, the beach scene where the kissing couple gets walloped by the surf, the background scenery of the airport that makes you scream because that was 30 years ago and I think that 1/2" yellow tile still exists in many places!