So $90bb is back, they say $100bb in weeks.
FT.com / Commodities - Crude oil tipped to bubble over $100 a barrel

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Put this is in the bizarre category:
The $791 million expanded runway at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport will slowly slope upward to a height of about 65 feet, an eye-popping design that airport officials said Tuesday will be safe.

The runway rises gradually over a span of 8,000 feet as it heads east, until it reaches its full six-story height and ends abruptly with a retaining wall. Planes will land about 1,500 feet away from the sky-high edge, county consultants said.
...
In addition, Carlos Phillips, an engineer for Delta Air Lines, wrote a letter to the county saying
the carrier reviewed the design and determined the slope “only slightly affects takeoff weights and that most of the missions can still be performed … without significant restriction.’’

Broward Politics | Sun Sentinel Blogs | Six story runway is ?preferred? design at Broward?s airport

http://www.broward.org/Airport/Commu...51710final.pdf

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/media/gr...1/57517070.jpg

And we complain about 26R... actually, I like 26R... well, either way, enjoy! I'm off to take a wiki leak. :D

Sweet-time to pull out the Festivus tie. :)

I wonder about that too. The sheer numbers are amazing enough from a planning/staffing/hiring/training standpoint, but what about the net training event potential? The perverbial saying is that for every one widebody captain that retires, that's 5-10 training events. So if anywhere remotely close to 1000 go in a single year.....:eek: Even 500 would be a logistical wonder.

Hmmm, I wonder if the company can still do that "post retirement pilot" thing.

One easy way to reduce the training load would be to de-link pay from airframe, and go to a straight seat/seniority system. It'd remove the financial incentive to go to the next airframe up and create more stability in the pilot group.

Urban Meyer stepping down at Florida Gators - ESPN

Christmas comes early for T!

I like that idea but you would have to phase it in. No way you would get the 777/747 captains to agree to a pay cut.

The other one is to have the carrier perform less of it flying. (Outsourcing)

Therefore, everyone needs to keep their eye on the ball and not sell one ounce of scope. It is a lot easier for DAL to only train the top end well the bottom end gets handed to DCI. If that does not happen, the need here for pilots becomes great.

T would probably prefer if the stadium imploded during the Florida-Georgia game. :D

The company has in the past sustained hiring 100 pilots a month. With the addition of the NWA training facility they can handle the training easily. It will be even easier this time since so much of the training is home study. The company has had years where they retired 600 pilots. Its not that big of a deal for them. The biggest problem is that when you get into a major hiring surge or retirement window you need to pre hire extra pilots to account for those in school. With the home study that need will be less but still a issue. I suspect that is factored into hiring plans for the next 2 or 3 years. They have to build a cushion for the coming retirements. That number used to be about 10 percent. With home study a conservative number will require about 5 to 7 percent more bodies when they get into a big training cycle. It could be as high as 8 percent. That is a lot of extra jobs at a airline this size.
The downside to the extra bodies is that furloughs often follow when hiring stops and they don't need the bodies. In this case however the volume of retirements is so deep that it should not become a issue.
As far as PRP's like they had in the year they retired 600 plus pilots it is not a player this time. When that happened Delta pilots had a retirement. Former Delta pilots are 100 percent divorced from the company for retirement purposes. There would be no point in a PRP program for them. If they want to work longer simply don't retire. The PRP's were able to retire and draw their retirement and a working salary. Can't happen now with the exception of former NWA pilots. They could be used in a PRP mode however I don't really think the company will need it. Not all retiring pilots got into the PRP program and off those who did if you exclude the check airman the average PRP flew only 6 additional weeks.

They could also create additional efficiencies by:

1) Not putting a pilot through CQ a month before they go to an intial on a new airframe - fly them into a grace month or even (gasp) bench them for a few weeks.

2) Combine training and standards into a single training department and to streamline training and eliminate redundancies. Everyone else in the biz does.

3) Have more than one individual for a 12000 plot airline schedule OE and train more LCP's. Seems like a month from GS to OE is pretty common.

4) Change structure of IP's to have them do both Sim and LCP on a rotating basis, ex. 3 months in the Sims, 3 months on the line. Takes care of the whole seperate training/standards thing. Have a larger cadre of dual qualified instructors, and provide them with incentives that attract to the position: pos space to work, hotels, and an override.

I know, I know - if there was a better way we would have thought of it already :cool: