i have been calling and emailing my reps as much as possible lately and they have been great about getting back to me.

I'll bet nobody saw THAT coming.. :rolleyes:

What happens in Oct will be determined by the bookings for Sept-Dec. Right now I would not be surprised to see furloughs. Our Sept bookings stink! Of note people are not buying as far out as they used to, and DAL knows that.

Like I have said before, they need to make certain they have staffing for mid 2010 where BP 5 requires our staffing at FNWA. Once they can determine that, they will make employee adjustments as necessary.

Personally, I would be floored if we got though this downturn without furloughs. Only benefit we have is that staffing was very lean to start out with.

acl,

rumor on line has it that NWA is approx 10% understaffed for BP5. Any idea how accurate that is?

Also, what would you guess for furloughs, 400 or so or more like 1200 or more?

Thanks,

Trying to stay positive
 

I know this has been mentioned before - but I think it bears repeating: If Delta is going to furlough in response to the economy, they had better do so NOW! (actually, they should have last fall) If the economy starts to improve next year (like many think it will) then furloughs in October will be much too late. True - bookings for fall my be dismal, and I'm sure next winter will probably be even worse, but if bookings start to rebound next spring then those pilots will be needed. It is much too expensive for the company to furlough for just a few months. Oh, and don't forget the training bubble that will be needed after SOC.

Since I have absolutely no control over these things, I have to find something to feel good about :)

I heard that the Chinese MD90's are very close to being a done deal. I was told 19 airplanes.

I also heard that some DC9's will be parked if the 90's deal goes through for sure.

Does anyone know if there will be growth overall or a wash?

Thanks

I think that would be a long term goal, replaces 9s with 90s (and 76 seaters at DCI) but the 90s are rumored to be coming long before you could just put them in the fleet as 9 replacements nor would you want to replace a jet as cheap as the 9s to run if fuel remains cheap. So something on the DAL side would be parked 1:1 until later.

I might've made that up. But I think thats what you guys said earlier.

If ALPA can keep our no furlough protections and LOA 2006-10 in place, I think we might make it through this mess without furloughs. Forcing them to take the seats out of the 76-seat jets along with the training costs involved in flowing back to Compass and the affiliate carriers really raises the already high costs to furlough. If they wait till next fall, it might be cheaper just to pay us and make the ALV's all around 65 hours.

Like I have said before, no furloughs are planned. I mean that. There is not some secret. In fact as of last week, our management stated that our staffing looks to be adequate for post SOC. Read not fat or short. Because this is what they are seeing, they would need to see a need to have another pull down of at least 5% before furloughs would start to make sense. That is based on today's numbers.

Of note we would need to see over a 20% drop in revenue to not make a profit this year. That says a lot.

On the 90''s. 19 is a good number but 26 is better. The talk long ago was that they would be 1 for 1. Now they could bring them on get all of the 76 seat jets they want and then park the 9's or 88's. It really depends on the economy. I do not think that all of the 90's will be flying though. I would not be surprised to see a few out in VCV until the economy improves. We should get them at about 8 mil a copy and 1 mil in mtc work. Even at this deal they are more expensive than both the 88 and 9's due to the low lease rates on the 88's and no payments on the 9.

I agree that it is possible that we will not see a furlough, but I will be surprised. If you look at the world around us, sooner or later people are going to have to stop getting on airplanes. We have seen some of it, but nothing close to what we should have. With all of the layoffs, that is why we are looking at Fall numbers to tell the tail. That is where the effects of the last six months will be seen. As I have said, barring a met down, we are close to required staffing for BP5 where new comes to our staffing rules.

Thanks acl. Keep up the good work