Really? What parts are better/worse? How would the bottom 1K get hurt? I don't think you will find any pilots worrying about their retirement over there... Their 401K was rated 3rd among plans with over $1B in assets.

Sailing...could you please provide some detail in comparing our contract to SWA's? Bullet points? Or, exactly which section(s) of our PWA is actually better than theirs?


I will help you out and get you started:

DAL Retirement: 11%/2% SWA Retirement: 9.3%/avg 10% profit share

Its kind of shortsighted to quote from a 1113 contract. Its a given that our rates will go up on the next contract. You wont find many pilots who will vote to reduce the retirement contribution from 14% to 9.3 percent..

The pay rates day after tomorrow will also be 174 an hour with a increase to 13% in retirement. In 12 months it goes to 14% with another pay increase. Also when quoting straight pay rates you need to allow for the fact that there is more premium pay given out under the Delta contract. For Dec I will have worked a total of 14 days with DH deviations. I am getting in excess of 180 hours pay. Not bad for 14 days.

The contracts are so totally different that you can't cherry pick individual items. You need to look at the contracts as a whole. Again for obvious reasons if your in the bottom 1000 pilots at Delta the last thing you want is SWA's contract.

I will give you one quick answer. They will get hurt because they will be on the street furloughed. The Average SWA pilots now flies over 900 block hours a year. The average Delta pilot around 800. The math is simple. These block hours numbers are from memory going back a few years so could have changed however I know that my friends at SWA constantly battle the 1000 limit at SW and the 100 hours per month to try and maximize earnings. Its the main reason they taxi so fast. Very few pilots at Delta have been block hour limited since we made a huge mistake and did away with the caps.
FYI prior to the 1113 contract the average Delta pilot flew 600 block hours a year. We lost 25% of our pilot jobs to work rule changes.

While I'm certainly not buying the assertion that our contract is as good as SWA's, I see one point that he's trying to make. They justify their higher rates with higher productivity, as defined by a higher number of block hours flown by each pilot. If we were to go from averaging 600 hours per year to 700 per year, how many surplus pilots would we have?

Are those numbers accurate? I thought we were closer to 600 hours.

Thanks to the Compass flowback provisions gained in the merger, I don't think you'll see any furloughs anytime soon. If another 9/11 level event happens, then everything is out the window.

Point taken. But how much is the carrying cost of a pilot? 10K/yr, 15K/yr, 20K/yr? Regardless, its not near the compensation difference we currently realize.

$40/hr + approx 40K/yr profit sharing

The compass flowback is not a big deal in furloughs. Its simply another category. Delta express presented the exact same isssues as Compass does in a furlough and it did not slow the company a bit.
The Compass flowback is simply one part of many layers in cost for the company to furlough. The merger with NW has produced a much more diverse fleet that will increase training in a furlough far more then the small Compass operation.
Even if the company decided not to furlough they would stockpile the extra pilots in the lowest paid seats. That would lead to a situation like we had in 09 where we were overstaffed and the reductions had pilots screaming about not enough flying available. Pilots in the bottom copilot seats would see a large cut in pay.

We are talking about two completely different things. Efficiency is what we like to have: we want to get maximum hours per day of work. Productivity is what the company wants: maximum number of block hours flown per year by each pilot. The company would prefer that we all fly to the FAR max every year.

I'm all for efficient schedules; while trip rigs don't affect my schedule, I'd support some improvement to them.

As far as productivity, I think we're about as productive as we need to be, and because of the nature of Delta's operation, we should resist all comparisons between the productivity of the average Delta pilot and the average Southwest pilot.

I am not asserting that our contract is as good as SWA contract either. To accept the current SWA contract as our next contract is however not going to be nearly enough for me to vote yes. If we offered the SWA contract to management I would bet they would jump on it and except instantly. I am however asserting that the differences between the contracts are not nearly as great when you look at all items. I expect at a very minimum SWA payrates plus a few percent and to keep the good things we have in our contract like the 14% retirement contribution. In fact I expect that number to go up into the 16 to 18 Percent range not remain at 14. Offer Delta management the SWA contract and they will have a party over in the GO that will last for weeks!!!