I just read on the Deltanet 747 page about Steve Smith the 747 fleet captain stepping down. The 777 fleet captain Mike Doyle is going to take over Steve's duties as fleet captain. Now I am not knocking Mr. Doyle (I don't even know him) but how much 747 experience does he bring to the table? Seems like we would want someone who has a lot of 744 experience running the program not the 777 fleet captain......

I am not one to bring up the North verses South but in this case it sure seems like they are promoting/assigning from within.

Just to clarify the two crews that were in trouble at JFK. Were not talking a few minutes. One crew was told to expect a 90 minute delay for a deice slot. They blocked the aircraft out. Ramp tower corrected the time to their actual push time and one of the FO's filed a grievance with the union to get the time back. This lead to a investigation on how the time got changed and the gate video and autobahn tapes were pulled. It got ugly from there.
The second time it was a long haul over 12 hour flight. The dispatcher noticed the flight had been on the ground after push for over 2 hours. He called JFK ground to see why the flight was not airborne and try and expedite the flight to avoid the crew timing out. JFK ground informed them that the aircraft was still at the gate and had never pushed. No ones going to hassle you or fire you over 5 minutes or even 15 minutes. Had the copilot in the first crew not filed a grievance it would have never been a issue. The second incident happened within a week or so of the first when things were now highlighted.

Is it a temporary assignment?

Not that unusual for DAL. The Fleet Captains a few years ago were retired pilots. We went to active line qualified pilots again with the merger. Used to be the SE Regional Director.

Did it say who was taking over the 777? They may stick a F-NWA guy up there. :eek: It is a management position so I do not beleive the fence applies.

Doesn't this violate the 744 CA postions that are protected by the SLI

Like I said above it is a management position so I do not beleive it is part of the merger fences.

Ahh...not to worry my friend Moak will have the side LOA crafted up and signed by next week in exchange for an aisle bulkhead seat quaranteed for all domestic DH (if one is available at time of checkin:D)

Management pilots are still in-good standing active ALPA members and will need to qualify on the aircraft to be the fleet captain, no?

No, it's not. He will be running the 777 and 744 program even though he has no 744 experience.

Carl

It's just more of "Operation Visine". Getting the red out.

The larger question is why Steve and now Greg are retiring early? They loved their jobs and were absolutely great at doing them.

Carl