georgetg

Its one thing pulling out of a market altogether like in DFW, and for the record I agree it sucks what happened in DFW.

This Alaska JV is different.

The company's desire is to set up a situation that is conducive to a future merger, thus the elimination of all overlap between Delta and Alaska.

I happen to support the strategic moves Delta management is making.
Long term this will pan out well for Delta.

What I'm troubled by is how easily our MEC sold out scope.
Here's the story were supposed to buy:

Delta passenger flown by Delta pilot = money lost
Delta passenger flown by Alaska pilot = great feed

Somehow Alaska is able to fly up and down the West coast and is profitable. But were supposed to believe that if a Delta pilots flew a Delta jet on the same route we would lose money...

My beef, is how my Union sold out scope, plain and simple.
This time its not RJs, its mainline jets.

This isn't a RASM issue or a merger issue...
This is a scope issue.

Cheers
George

amcflyboy

Saw on the main APC website that Delta may be hiring again. Is this true? Can anybody back this up??

Roadie85

[QUOTE=georgetg;882944]Its one thing pulling out of a market altogether like in DFW, and for the record I agree it sucks what happened in DFW.

This Alaska JV is different.

The company's desire is to set up a situation that is conducive to a future merger, thus the elimination of all overlap between Delta and Alaska.

I happen to support the strategic moves Delta management is making.
Long term this will pan out well for Delta.


What happens if AMR buys Alaska and leaves Delta with no west coast feed? How did our scope language allow Alaska to fly our routes with 737's.

acl65pilot

It has been discussed. It would stink for DAL, but it would be proof positive of why code shares can be a very bad idea.

I would expect a very quick response if AS was bought by someone other than DAL.

Roadie85

One solution to the Intl 24 hr SC issue is to reduce the number of Intl SC days to 3 a month. 6 days for domestic 12 hr SC's, 3 days for Intl 24 hr SC's. Same number of hours required.

Sink r8

Can't it be both a scope issue and a merger issue? And a bankruptcy issue?

For the record, I did see the CAL/NWA codeshare being sold pretty aggressively, so I understand your point about the MEC's tendency to sell us codeshares. But I'm not sure you're correct about the Alaska codeshare specifically. I believe the agreement was a long-standing NW arrangement. I would imagine it was made a lot less favorable (to us) through the BK process.

You can't merge with NW, have a lot of the Asian feed (from the West Coast) dependent on Alaska, dump that feed post-merger, then expect Asia yo do well. The problem isn't that we can't do the flying: it's that Alaska was already doing the flying. If you yank the contract... they're still here, and they want to make money. They'll simply shift partners. It's not either us or Alaska doing the feed: it's either this arrangement, or it's competing with Alaska on their turf, and possibly losing a lot of the rationale for the NRT hub.

So I think you're porbably oversimplifying this thing. You have to rewind this movie quite a bit to find when the camel was actually allowed into the tent. I suspect that MEC is long, long gone, and we wouldn't recognize their name anyway.

Which does make your point in another sense: once we start down the negative slope, those concessions become cumulative, and you wake up one morning realizing virtually all the flying is gone.

NWA320pilot

Can anybody tell me what a day of annual vacation is worth?

Thanks

Denny Crane

3 hours.

Denny

Xray678

Three hours.

NWA320pilot

Thank you Mr. Crane!