Ask during the next base visit. My understanding is Delta will order the rest if they can stabilize Mesabah/Pinnacle/Endeavor. Mesabah says the employment situation there is not stable enough to spend the money yet.

If I'm not mistaken most of the retirements will come off the top paying equipment so there will still be lots of training going on which neither you nor I can quantify. What does not a proponent of pay banding mean to you ? I will be a dot long before pay banding is even an issue. I'm soon to fall off the ladder you accuse me of pulling up.

In this extremely profitable environment I am opposed to granting further concessions, especially those that cost jobs.

The day I retire, I will care just as much for the pilot on the bottom of the seniority list as I do myself.

I hope you will do the same.

Ask your reps. Going forward pay banding is a 15% productivity gain for management. That is 1800 pilots.

Haven't we given enough?

Jerry

On the above items, you are preaching to the choir. Actually, if you look back to some of my posts, I think you are preaching to the preacher. :D

I was just pointing out that the identity of Ts and sailing are pretty much known to everyone who have been on here for a while. They aren't really hiding behind their screen names.

Good post Jerry, maybe you are trainable. :-)

Thank you!

I'm not trying to change the topic, but I do have a proposal for C2015:


While our reserve system is much better than it has been, it still isn't as good as I think it can/should be. I would love it if reserves could:


1.) Pick up trips from open time before they are assigned a day out. I think United pilots can pick up trips 3 days out.

2.) Yellow slip for trips that are not in their silos and get them over pilots who have no yellow slip preference in.

While #1 might be a longshot, #2 shouldn't be.

I know the company thinks they want to match with reserves according to what silo they are, but in my category, I've seen a lot of pilots get assigned trip back to back to back, while others just sit there. There were three trips I YS'ed last week that went to reserves in the 4 day silo while I sat in the 5 day silo. All three of them were later called in fatigued (and after looking at the pilots schedules, I don't blame them.). What I'm seeing is that FAR117 is making fatigue calls more likely.

Maybe allowing pilots to YS trips outside of their SILO might help everyone.


Any thoughts?

Not sure on 1, but I definitely agree with number 2, newK!

Edit: Too, radical. I'll repost it later.

Jerry I don't like the concept of pay banding but 1800 jobs? Lets be honest here. You posted the amount of training you expect from 800 retirements a year and translate that to job loss. What you don't factor in is how many training events there would be with pay banding. Pilots will still move for many reasons. Trips on equipment, pay raise to a new band, bored ect... I suspect that in the end the difference in training via pay banding into 4 groups verses what we have today might be a 10 percent reduction in training events. That would not translate to much of a job loss in most years even the peak.
I don't want pay banding because I think when you divorce yourself entirely from the revenue generation capabilities of the airframes you make it harder to generate future raises. Yes pay banding will cost jobs but nothing like 1800.
Pay banding was floated by Leo Mullins around 2000 and it went over like a lead ballon. Taxi speeds dropped to a crawl for a few days and management quickly retracted it. The rates they offered were good so it was the concept not the rates that were rejected. I don't see the pilot group going for it today.

So anyone who doesn't gleefully promote a "burn down the house/full pay to the last day/liquidation, not humiliation!" (I've seen and heard all of them) is an "advocate for concessions and helping management"????

Evidence? I can claim that the moon is made of green cheese, but I better have a slice of it to show you. Most guys on here are just guys who take an interest in their career and find this forum more congenial and less toxic than others--such as the DALPA forum that posts such as yours (and Buzz's equally toxic counterposts) helped render inconsequential.

I agree that the C2012 sell job was over the top. That said I voted for it, and would again. It was a good--not great--agreement. If I had a crystal ball I would know how to bet at the horse races. I don't, and given lots of things, I would vote for it again.

We didn't. DALPA has done a great job getting us lots of incremental gains compounded on top of each other. You attack Sailing's posts, but he is spot on. Work rules, pay and retirement contributions are all far, far improved from our lowest points 8-9 years ago. What has the APA accomplished? Very little, until recently. USAPA? What a joke.

.

Probably a bit of an oversell on DALPA's part. But do you think voting No would have given us a markedly improved contract? I don't.

For nothing? Are you kidding me? Do you even read the contract or know what is in it? How about a permanent increase to the reserve guarantee? How about vacation, mil leave, etc, applying toward when a reserve is full for the month? That alone was a huge quality of life improvement--one that C2K never had, nor ever envisioned.

Like most pilots, you don't realize that profits are, by definition, the property of the shareholders. That is why Apple (beloved by many mgmt and DALPA-bashers) has $130 BILLION dollars in cash just sitting there--not one penny of it is going to the employees. Where is the hate? Microsoft had a $54 billion hoard a few years ago and actually told the employees that they (the employees) had to pay more for health care because "Microsoft couldn't afford it." When the $54 billion was brought up, their CEO (Steve Ballmer at the time) replied, "that's not your money, that's the shareholders' money." Microsoft then proceeded to get rid of all of the cash with a special one time dividend and stock buyback--none of it went to the employees. While that is cold, heartless, and something that I do NOT embrace, remember that next time you accuse DALPA of a "sellout" because mgmt allocated cash to the shareholders and not us. Any money we get from the company has to be strongly wrested from mgmt. They and the shareholders that they represent don't just hand it over because an internet message board loudly proclaims that they are suppose to. Given that, I think our DALPA negotiators have done a great job the past few years, one relatively small gain at a time, many times, each compounded on top of each.

That doesn't mean that I want profit sharing reduced, but management is "giving" anything away with dividends and stock buybacks. The shareholders, represented by the BOD are entitled to it, if they wish in that form.

I think I know who Sailing is. He isn't "connected" or "influential." While I find some of his posts a bit haughty, I also read that he just stays engaged, informed, and doesn't pull factoids out of his derriere to support the quickly-forgotten argument of the moment.

Source? Since we just negotiated to wrest back our sick leave into it's current and decent form from the BK trashing it took, I think it would be mighty astounding for mgmt to try and take it back down a notch or two.

You may be right on the other two, but just because they propose it doesn't mean much, especially in this huge profit era.

I disagree with your first statement. I and everyone else on this seniority list agree with the second.

Even if your number is correct, have you forgotten to add back all the gains? And for what it's worth, while the C2K pay rates were great, you can have the work rules. Our work rules are much better now. Or do you want...

Reserves are guaranteed a Duty Period Minimum of 2 hours, and other than trip and duty rigs that may or may not mean anything, NOTHING else--no Average Daily Guarantee, no Duty Period Average.

No Average Daily Guarantee at all.

No Vacation Slide. By God, every vacation will start on Sunday, end on Saturday, and you are going to like it.

No Bidding for CQ. You will go to CQ when the company, not the pilot, says. You can be #1 and by God if the company wants to schedule you for back to back A period sims, which you hate, then guess what That is what you get. (Happened to me many times pre-bidding for CQ, hasn't happened yet since).

I agree--and we don't have much of one any more. It is far far better than what it was 8-9 years ago. It is not the same contract by a light year. That said we still have a ways to go on the pay side, though lately I've flown with a lot of guys recently saying something like "I was pleasantly surprised by my 2013 W2."

I can agree with you there. I disagree with your method. You seem to think that constant conflict, automatically voting No on anything, and publicly insulting the very guys who are putting their lives on hold for a couple of years on all of our behalf is somehow effective. The APA and USAPAs of the world show that that is not necessarily the case.

After some intellectual "waffling" I am "all in" in favor of DALPA's current approach, because it currently is working. That is due in part to a good management team that wants to get along and prosper together.

I realize that these conditions won't always exist, and there most likely will be a time to think of taking very hard-nosed, threatening positions. I just don't think it necessary to do so now, as long as keep getting contractual improvements year after year, as we have ever since the merger, and even slightly prior to that.

Isn't that special?

blah blah blah..... dounghnut talking points all around.


When's the vote Jerry?

Management would love number 1, but every line holder out there would not.

OK wiseguy. Same bet to you that I offered Carl. 50 thousand dollars says that I will not sell one damned thing until there is a vote. When we have a TA, I will sell nothing. Put your money where your mouth is Jerry.. Heck if I can get all the DPA clowns to take the bet I'll retire after the contract is signed.

You talk really big, but you don't back it up. Accuse me of selling concessions... let's get it on.

Or are you scared?

We can even have jury selection to see if I break the rules. I figure we can come up with 5 people on here to judge whether or not I was selling anything. You are so confident, you have nothing to lose.

Without any comment on the wisdom of pay banding, at least the discussion should center around the facts rather than wild speculation.

If you want to figure out the productivity gains from pay banding you would start with the average number of non-new hire pilots that are in the upgrade training pipeline (from initial academics through IOE completion) on any given day. Continuing qualification training would not count as that would stay unchanged with pay banding.

You would use a daily average because we have training starting and ending each day of the month and a variable amount of crews are in training in any one day. You would exclude new hires because no matter what the pay structure is, you will have to give them training when they get hired.

My guess is the daily average is in the 100-150 pilot range. It was lower before but training has been going up lately. Maybe someone with training center connections has a better number.

For the sake of discussion, let's use 150. If you go to pay banding, you will not be able to eliminate all training, because pilots will still jump between bands and from first officer to Captain. Let's estimate that we would save 1/3 of training by going to pay banding. That means you would save on average 50 pilots per year from pay banding.

If you try to say it's 1800 pilots, that means you would estimate that there are 5400 pilots in training at any one time, again assuming you save 1/3 of the training events. Even if you predict you will save 100% of training events (an impossibility unless you lock every new hire into one seat, including Captain seats, and keep them there until retirement) you would need to average 1800 pilots a day in training to save 1800 jobs. In other words, every Delta pilot would change jobs in 12 months or less. That does not seem plausible.

Attack away, but at least attack with facts not wild hyperbole.

Codeshare Partners ..bye bye
 

I just love Austrailian reporting ...

Nice try to get the focus off you selling us out for the management tool you are.

None of my posts have anything to do with DPA.

Let's focus on you and sailing not selling concessions during record profits.

The Big Machine
 

There are days when you realize that no matter what you are part of a big and often heartless profit machine. As many of you in SEC country are probably aware former Auburn University TE Philip Lutzenkirchen was killed in a car accident very early Sunday morning. Though our time at Auburn did not overlap (I'm a bit older than Lutz) the younger brother of one of my closest friends did become roommates with Philip for several years. This younger brother is going to be married in August and the customary bachelor party in Las Vegas was scheduled for the July 4th weekend, Philip was scheduled to attend the bachelor party (had a ticket booked with Delta) and was supposed to be a groomsman in the wedding.

The party is scheduled to fly out of MSY to LAS on Thursday via LAX on Delta. The brother of my friend will now be traveling to ATL to attend the funeral services for Lutz on Wednesday and called Delta to try and change the first segment of his itinerary so that he could fly out of ATL instead of MSY. In order to do this Delta will charge my friend $320 to make up the fare difference. He was initially told he would be charged an additional $200 change fee though it was subsequently decided that if he would provide the name of the deceased, name of funeral home, and phone number of funeral director that they would change this.

I realize that there are bad people who would attempt to defraud Delta Air Lines by using the "my friend died" excuse. However, in this and all sincerely tragic circumstances it is sad to see the profit machine in work when there are flights with seats available.

Just an observation and this type of scenario is likely not unique to Delta. A tragic circumstance for these young men, not being made any easier by the airlines.

UA

Thank you for popping up on frequency for this topic. My concerns are more along the lines of:

• How would pay banding effect us in a category and status merger?
• What are the effects on top line scope of pay banding (JV negotiations)?
• What are the effects on small jet (permitted flying arrangements) as a result of pay banding?
• What is our competitive environment? What are other airlines doing?

IMHO now may be the time to get the maximum benefit from this kind of change because we know management is having a training problem. During a down turn pay banding delivers nothing.

What are your preliminary thoughts on pay banding's effects on mergers and scope negotiations? If we combined pay banding with scope recapture, I could be sold on the idea.

Back of the napkin math; I figure 2% or 3% could be recaptured from pilot pay, DGS and Delta resources for this change. That's less than my cable TV bill in after-tax money. If there is an extrinsic virtue here, it needs to be considered.

Jerry,

Is a run of the mill line check airman a management tool? If so, then yes tsquare and sailing are management tools.

You cheapen your message when you throw the management tool thing around so flippantly.

XXXX (don't out someone unless they have outed themselves intentionally)

Let's say we have 900 retirements in 12 months. Each retirement results in 6 initial training events. 5400 initial training events. Pay banding will mitigate this in a huge way. Again I estimate 8 to 10 initials per retirement.

The major point is why make concessions during record profits?

Jerry

+757.


I think I'm on his side, for the most part. But, then I read that, and I'm against him.

We should be aiming high for the next contract (max pay, work rules, benefits, vacation, etc.). We shouldn't be aiming at each other.

Happy to hear you won't be advocating concessions. Hope it's contagous.

Alpha,

Doesn't John Bell do a move in/out of category matrix with every AE? Take a years worth and that will give you the total number of initial training events for a year. I'm sure the MEC office has the numbers in any case. Of course that doesn't account for forward looking increases in training.

If you use your average of 150 pilots in other than new hire and CQ on any given day and that a initial course is an avg of 5 weeks, back of the napkin would be 150/5 week training events into 52 weeks, or 1500 other than new hire/CQ training events per year. With a 1/3 reduction with pay banding that would be a 500 pilot training event reduction per year.

Not sure would that would equate to in a reduced pilot list, but I don't think it's either 500 or 50.

Yeah. I'm sure you are right. I wonder if even more senior people will bid reserve though. What do you think about option #2?

What do you call this? Intelligent debate? You give, you get.

Staving off management's attack on our profit sharing and pursuing pay banding are game changers. Not to be disregarded as doughnut talk.

Jerry



Originally Posted by tsquare http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/im...s/viewpost.gif
blah blah blah..... dounghnut talking points all around.


When's the vote Jerry?

Just to be clear, my guess at 150 is simply a guess. I don't have access to any current data. Maybe it's more or less. My point was to show that if you want to calculate the savings, start with the number of pilots in training in any one period, figure out the savings created with pay banding (surely much less than 100% savings), and then figure out the jobs saved.

In your example, you save 500 training events at 5 weeks per event. That means that each training event costs Delta 5 out of 52 weeks of pilot productivity or 9.6% of a pilot's yearly productivity. Multiply 9.6% x 500 saved events and you come up with about 48 pilots. I would think the actual number is north of that savings.

As you said, there is surely better data out there and that would be the best starting point to have an intelligent discussion about which way the pilot group wants to go.

The other issue to discuss about pay banding is the cost savings to the company for stuff that does not affect pilot staffing. For example, they would save in simulator time, hotel costs, DGS staffing, and many other items that Delta spends money on, but doesn't end up in a Delta pilot's pocket.

That was one of the items exploited in C2012. The reason we ended up 41% ahead of our industry competitors was because much of the money to fund our contractual increases came from entities that Delta would have paid money to other than pilots. DCI contractors, engine overhaul, fuel expense, landing fees, and many other items were saved by the shift from DCI to mainline, meaning we use fewer airframes to fly the same or greater capacity. This shift in funding gave us returns that were as far ahead of industry average as I have ever seen any pilot group.

I don't see pay banding as affecting mergers. In the UAL/CAL case there were numerous examples of aircraft that were treated as separate categories even though they were in the same pay band.

I don't see how scope issues would be directly affected by pay banding. Adding small jets to our contract at current industry standard rates creates a whole set of pay/training issues. Using pay banding to restructure the first ?? years of pilot pay might solve some of those problems. (Don't know what ?? is)

Both United and American have pay banding. Southwest of course only has one pay rate. Right now, our pay system is probably more of an outlier in the industry rather than the norm.

For sure, if you want to get the most value out of pay banding, you would do it sooner rather than later.

I am starting to agree with Sailing, T and Alfa. We need to buy mom a widebody next contract.

If past performance is an indicator of future prospects, I suspect DALPA will have left enough money on the table to buy several wide bodies for ma. With plenty left over for exec bonuses and dividends..

As I said in a previous post, eliminating a training event does not equate to saving a pilot job. It is merely the fraction of the year that the pilot is in training. 5400 initial training events seems a little high, that is 450 per month. Maybe that is the correct number, I really don't know. Even if you accept 450 per month and you save 1/3, you end up at 150 jobs saved, which is far away from 1800.

If you start a negotiation by telling the counter party that you aren't going to listen to their problems, then there is very little incentive for that side to engage in any meaningful negotiations. The company today is different than it was 3 years ago and it will be different 3 years from now. If you expect management to just have to live with our contract as an unmovable object, then they would probably accept that proposal. We only have to look at the very recent past to see pilot groups that have gone over a decade without a pay raise.

We are in an up negotiating environment. That means that any change to our contract will be a net positive. It is in our direct interest to have a deal done sooner rather than later. "I will get 100% retroactive pay" has turned into a completely empty promise. Wimpy never repays you on Tuesday the nickel that he borrowed to buy a hamburger today.

Negotiating an up contract doesn't mean you don't engage in solving some of the Company's problems. That is why it is called negotiations and not a hostage taking. I seriously doubt you can ever find a successful negotiator that will advise you to stiff arm the other side. It is not productive bargaining, it is simply listing demands. We will take many more steps forward than backward. If you concentrate only on the backward steps then it will drive you crazy. I have never seen a contract that went only one way. Even in bankruptcy we obtained concessions from management.

"Solving the company's problems." Truly unbelievable.

The company didn't give two sh!ts about the pilots' problems when times were bad. Why are you so worried about solving management's problems now?

The only thing I took away from your post is that we best get ready for more concessions. When the company is making record profits.

After the sacrifices much of this pilot group has made to enable this record profitability, you want to talk about concessions.

So is the bet on? Or is it somehow OK to slander me whenever you talk about me?

Gutless keyboard warrior. I'll pony up the money in an escrow account, we'll get the wager in writing, sit a jury, and you can spew whatever venomous propaganda and lies you want to whenever the TA is reached. I'll simply stick to the facts.

Not sure where you're getting your info, while you are eligible for Social Security at age 62, YOU ARE NOT ELIGIBLE FOR MEDICARE UNTIL AGE 65. Yes, that is definitely what keeps some people working until age 65.

gzsg, don't get dragged down with Tsquare. He has a lot more riding on concessions than he lets on. He has a vested interest in a concessionary contract.

He's been called out for flouting the company's stock purchase embargo for pilots, and freely brags about how much money he stands to make from his ill-considered purchases.

I suspect he'll make a far more money when the stock goes up due to a concessionary or cost-neutral contract than he could with a big contract that lowers the stock price.

That's a great post. Factual and unemotional in it's content.

Contrast that with:

Alfa,

Good cogent discussion on the topic, however why are we going down this road? There has been no contract survey to judge pilot sentiment on this, the Reps have not given direction to pursue this.
Where and from whom does this originate? Obviously this is someone's idea for an early negotiating opportunity to solve the companies problems and exchange productivity for pay/TVM. The yang to this is the company caused this themselves in large part and why are we rushing in to fix something they have not asked for (?).

For discussion let's even say its a significant net positive above the productivity traded for a "bigger piece of the pie", productivity still means we work more/harder with less pilots. Maybe that's not what this pilot group wants.

Maybe they would prefer QOL with the ability to have more flexibility. We don't know yet. It seems putting the cart way before the horse, and managing the discussion and context ahead of any official setting of negotiating priorities. It might even be a valid discussion to have, but I'm missing the bottom up part.

Remember, DPMA lasts for 1 year (per event). The ALPA insurance has a 1 year waiting period. Without any additional insurance, you go to half pay.
And yes, it can happen to you. Ax me how I know.

R1

I think you are also putting the cart before the horse here. It seems to me that alfa was merely cutting thru the BS of gszg's post regarding numbers that he threw out as being gospel. As you said yourself, there has been no survey as of yet, and no pulse of the pilot group has been taken, yet gszg throws out these astronomical numbers that will tend to take on a life of their own without challenge. alfa should be complimented for doing so in a logical unemotional manner.

A better way of saying what I am trying to say is not to let the rhetoric that is thrown out there become a "fact" without verification. 1800 pilots for example. Where did he get that number? If that is not challenged, and disputed or verified with fact, it becomes de facto "fact". gszg lives to divide this pilot group contrary to what he will say and accuse me or anybody else of. This is a small window into that. I will give him a small modicum of credit in that he has, in the past put out a good number or two, but never with any source behind it. I trust him as far as I can throw a baggage cart, because he relies on hyperbole more than fact. So like the boy who cried wolf... you can make your own decision on his legitimacy.


We have a long way to go before section 6. There will be plenty of time for billboards and informational picketing and getting everybody fired up to go on strike and burn down the village. I think it's a colossal waste of time to start doing all these things that the fearless keyboard warrior wants to do. If you disagree, ask yourself this: Do you think 11,000+ pilots are going to get as angry as PD and gszg appear, and more importantly, STAY that angry until we negotiate a contract? I know I won't, and I know LOTS of other pilots that just aren't that interested at this juncture. YMMV, but I hope for your sake it doesn't.

sorry for the long rant