Hopefully they didn't vote to raise the fuel tax.... by all accounts though ATL supposedly one of the cheaper hubs to operate in the country.

No, but my guess is not too many of those voted against the tax break if any are currently serving. Of course I am biased on this subject, but I thought it was ridiculous to deny the tax break based off DAL's elimination of the NRA discount, and I'm a solid supporter of 2A. If they just didn't want to offer a tax break that's one thing, but punishing a company that provides 10s of thousands of jobs in the state (#5 employer by volume https://www.newsmax.com/fastfeatures.../18/id/645208/), over a discount that roughly 10 people took advantage of is stupid at best.

I just have to say something here because the bad math bothers me.

Let's use a 30% tax rate just for ease of numbers.

If you make $200,000 a year you are paying $60,000 in taxes, giving you a take home of $140,000. If you have a pay increase to account for inflation taking you to $206,000 (a 3% increase), you are now paying 61,800 in taxes giving you a $144,200 take home, which is 3% more than the previous take home. The only time adjusting your pay at the inflation rate results in "losing out" is if you change tax brackets.

The idea of larger increases doesn't bother me, but your reasoning is not correct.

I'll also add that only pay rates don't automatically fix QOL issues. If someone just cares about time at home, pay rates do nothing if they can't drop trips or bid for more days off. If they want better deadhead rules, they lose out if they have to pay for them each time since (as already mentioned) it's after tax.

I don't think you understand tax brackets.

If you're a dollar under the next bracket, you aren't paying several percent less in your bracket than that one. That's not how it works.

A person that makes $200K and is married filing jointly will pay about $36.5K for federal taxes, not $60K

I need to get married!!

Actually, nevermind, I think the extra taxes are worth keeping my sanity :D

I just picked an easy percentage to use mentally.

I understand tax brackets. Any change in taxes paid by percentage would cause the raise to truly not keep up with inflation but the original poster was operating under the presumption that even at the same percentage the raise would not truly keep pace so tax bracket discussion was outside the scope of my discussion.

I think its even money the politicians didnt want to lose the revrnue. And all the hubub was simply convenient cover.

Just because their idgits doesnt mean their dumb. :)

Wait........are you all talking about this fuel tax break that the GA governor quietly put thru.....unless I missed something?

https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...lta-nra-fight/

Denny

Now you've just crossed the line man, I can't tell if you're trolling me or just from Georgia with your stellar spelling :). Regarding your point, there's no way to really know what goes on in a politician's mind but they certainly do like to take our money and waste it, I'll give you that.

**Wait........are you all talking about this fuel tax break that the GA governor quietly put thru.....unless I missed something?**


That was a temp punt back to the legislature, that wasn't in session at the time. Was kinda brilliant, he reinstated the tax break, then left office before the legislature came back in session to deal with it.

It had to be reinstated, the bill was in committee up to last minute, along with many others. They run till midnight on last day.

Seems to have died more by neglect than malice. Unlike last year no one is loudly claiming credit. I would imagine Delta will quietly and politely fire some shots (new routes not in ATL?) and lawmakers will reconsider poking the states largest employer in the eye.

Uhhh ok. Seeing as I’m kinda dense. Does this mean Delta got the reduced tax for awhile but it was reinstated later? Or is Delta still getting the tax break?

Denny

Denny...Yes Delta will start paying the tax again on July 1 I believe. Long story short is the the tax break was approved but only for a short amount of time and then it was up to the legislature to then extend the breaks longer or permanently and they failed to do so before the session was over so the tax break expired. I could see Delta adding future international destinations in other cities just to spite Georgia.

Thanks for putting it into words a History major can understand and thank goodness I’ve never claimed to be the sharpest tool in the shed!:)

Denny

I was just perusing the bid packages, and noticed that LAX 7ER B has tons of transcon deadheads to ATL on both ends that then fly a double Europe out and back. Is this odd? Is LAX getting a disproportionate amount of ATL 7ER international flying? Seems like a big waste of credit to me.

Any thoughts?

no base owns any flying, hope this helps.

I know. Just seems weird. Maybe all those 7er additions to Atlanta are going to take this over when they get here.

didn't they say for the AE that the expansion in ATL was for the BOS europe flying? I'm sure that plan has changed 20 times since then though.

Not unlike ATL ER guys dhing to LAX to fly Hawaii, which had routinely been done in the past. It's a mystery.

Thats part of deltas MWR program. :)

If that is the case, why are only some bases of a fleet required to get visas for certain countries while other bases of the same fleet are not required to obtain certain visas?

Then why do we have base specific bid packages?

Why not just have one giant bid package for each airplane and let pilots from all the bases bid?

the base still doesn't own the flying. They could say next month all China flying out of Seattle goes to ATL and NYC ER crews so they now need chinese visas.

flying shifts around there is nothing new. That doesn't change the fact that no base owns any flying.

I'm not an ER guy, but if I was, I think it would bother me that at my seniority I could hold international trips that start and end in Atlanta, but only if I was based in LAX. If I would in Atlanta I would only be able to hold domestic stuff.

When they blend the all-domestic narrow body categories between bases it is far less noticeable. The difference in QOL flying the European international flights makes it far more noticeable.

I just find it curious, not complaining as it doesn't effect me directly. I suspect this doesn't happen all of the time and is just there while they re-balance the categories to where the flying is. I couldn't imagine the company wanting to pay out that much credit when ATL already has local ER pilots to do the flying.

I understand the company can move things around month to month...I'm more talking about how they assign rotation 6969 to the NYC (insert your new hire NB plane here)....they (CR) has mis-managed the capt/fo ratio so there is negative reserve coverage for months in a row....APD's don't even work it's so bad....FO's can't move their schedule around at all.....then just when you finally fall into the right spot where you are off work and a trip is in OT and you can almost taste the greeny....they pull a reserve guy from another base to cover the said rotation.

This results in the one base (NYC) guys getting bent over twice: once not being able to move days around because of the poor manning and then again when not even getting a chance to get the GS.

In this example, if the rotation gets assigned to base X in the monthly bid package then they should own it and I feel like the in base guys should have first dibs at the GS before they call in the OOB reserve guy.

I would like to see the assignment ladder modified slighly becuase of this.

And yes it was in my survey answers.

you are preaching to the choir and i'd bet 90% of the pilot group agrees with you here.

Glad to know I'm not completey off the reservation.

Cheers!

Sorry for this completely random question but does any NWA guy remember at the end of 2007, what terminal did NWA park at LAX? Like around Dec 2007.

And in Summer 2010, did Delta use Terminal 6 at LAX for domestic flights?

I don't think its CR mismanaging as much as it is impossible to keep up with marketing. That and giving junior the FOs the ability to AE quicker (escape from NY) are contributing to these imbalances. 20 years ago we changed our schedule a few times a year and had Line of Time bidding. It was a much more static system.


Today it seems we change the schedule month to month. Things that were mostly manual are now mostly computerized. I also don't like it, but am willing to cut the company a little slack if they can consistently lead the industry and pull in 5B + profit a year.


As part of that I expect us (DAL Pilots) to benefit from an industry leading contract.



Scoop

Did anyone read the Fops weekly message where they said they are trying to get marketing to use the same "type" of plane in the markets throughout the day to provide better contingency planning rather than a market be 1 737, then an 88, then a 757 etc all on the same day.

I read it as “we are trying to find ways to eliminate 30 hour layovers”

Then no more backing long trips up to each other. That helps the company, too, by resetting the 30/168 clock.


GP

So min day then since the argument I’ve seen against is what about my 30 hr layover

.

A big piece of that initiative is so that spoke cities can stock more relevant spare parts to keep dispatch reliability up when there is a mechanical at an out station.

.

Interesting. From my experience, we dont carry an inventory of spares at non ATL hubs or gateway cities. I find it hard to believe a spoke city has any spare a/c parts. Ive been stuck in SLC waiting for parts from ATL to arrive. I would bet this is purley a staffing issue.

All of our spare parts are in ATL? I find this difficult to believe. Wasn't one of the reasons for putting a 220 base in SLC for maintenance? Are you ATL based?

I've waited in ATL for a part from LAX.

Why would some of my greenslip show up as credit? I did a 2 day greenslip and 515 is credit and 515 is in the greenslip column with 10:30 pay. I am reg not res.

Does the status show Open or Closed?