More importantly Nu, why is DAL engaging us on a flow down they will not use, unless a buyer sees it as language that supersedes DCI flying?

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Excellent point ACL. Leverage!

My understanding is the new system will allow us to push, but not taxi until we have our numbers, so no real change, just an improvement in on time departures

Which means that we will be imputing numbers on the ramps, further clogging them up. I say close the door, turn the beacon on, and then whatever happens from there is on the clock. That will give them the single biggest improvement in on time performance.

Scambo;
As you are aware, it is also about asking the question of why? and why now? What else is going on that makes this a issue for the company?

T- I believe you must of understood the airconditioning comments on the 320. It has a very good airconditioning, and is capable of SE taxi and keeping the cabin cool with both packs running thru the open pneumatic bleed.

And yes, there is no airplane around that has as poor on ground cooling as the DC-9 series airplane. That is one thing that did not improve from the DC-9-10 thru the DC-9-95

YGTBSM.. So DTW, ATL and everyother airport with choke points will come to a halt as metal sits off the gate yet unable to go anywhere with anyone else unable to taxi past them. The system that Delta has is fine, just need to figure a way to close out the flight 5 minutes prior. The NWA way created longer taxi checklists but sometimes the same phenomena (the ramper who loaded the bags went to lunch and forgot to input the bag count) happened, just off the gate. Again, either way worked. From my experience it's the below deck delays with bags that is causing and has caused problems with both systems in the past.

Perhaps this is something new, we can call it the Phase of Taxi integration! The number of phases are and will be unknown for some period of time, but expect a power point presentation and hidden .pdf files explaining to follow.

The first guy that grabs the manuals from the top 2 on-time major airlines and replicates those procedures will probably end up being promoted; I know it's not what we've done int he past 80 years but a novel concept nonetheless.

YGTBSM.

Sarcasm- OFF

TOGA, from what I have been told that is the plan. Pushback but do not taxi until we get the numbers. If we keep getting them like we do now, it should not be an issue. If that changes, go help us.

Two subjects:

SE taxi and APU usage. The recent fix to FPS2 seems to have fixed the "too much gas" problem on the A330. In fact it may have gone too far. I have been seeing overburn of 2K by PHX going west out of ATL and DTW. I heard there was also a fuel stop in LAX for a DTW-HNL flight... The 747 is still landing with 8K to 10K extra gas. For those that don't realize it, not only do we burn more gas by carrying it, but we also displace 8K-10K pounds of cargo. Those complaining about not saving gas because the A320 isnt doing SE taxi and is leaving the APU running should take aim at fixing the bigger six figure $$$ fish first, like fixing FPS2 for the 747 and 330.

Scope and flows: If its true that flow downs are furlough protection then keep it in the PWA. IMO the only way we should change Scope for RJ flying is "if it says Delta on the outside of the airplane then its flown by a pilot on the Delta seniority list at a Delta payrate." Nuff said. For those that are more ambitious we could extend that to "Delta printed on the ticket" and "both domestic and international." Not sure if the current MEC has the stones or the leverage.

We just had an incident yesterday here in NRT where the crew was lining up with the runway, when a new AWABS came up. Crew had to get off runway to investigate and see what changed.

If AWABS was a guarantee of no further changes, then we should stay with it. But it's not. As such, I think we're better off heading for the runway and getting numbers on the fly. That extra 3 to 5 minutes per leg that you would gain is worth it, IMO.

Carl