The company is in compliance with the contract on the MD-88. Who at Dalpa told you they were not? The side letter expired in March but the company can still keep the caps at or near the max for a few months. They will pay for it on the back end when they have to meet the yearly average. The displaced pilots will be coming out of training soon and the company can ramp the ALV back down.

I am the one who called DALPA and I didn't write his name down. The poster was referring to my earlier post.

I don't see how training has anything to do with this. We only lost one person (new airframe) due to the AE. I think about 6 guys on the bottom of the list now sit MD-88 reserve in ATL. The net effect in NYC hasn't changed because 9 times out of 10, if you were called out for reserve, it was for an ATL trip. We have plenty of MD-88 reserve coverage in NYC.

I don't understand why they've kept high ALVs when the total flying has slowed. It doesn't make sense and nobody has yet to explain it to me so that it does. This is also weird in that people near and around me in the seniority list have always been line holders, not so anymore (only one person has come in to category on top of us). Additionally, all I've heard from these road shows is that they're going to fly the you-know-what out of the MD-88 this summer and keeping a high ALV during a month in which they didn't need to doesn't make any sense.

-Fatty

Carl, you of all people should have learned by now that taking a fight to arbitration has risks. The NW pilots had a contract offer and a seniority list offer in February 2008. They insisted on going to arbitration for seniority. Fast forward to December 2008 and they had a contract and a seniority list. The seniority list is basically the same as the one offered in February and the contract is short many millions of dollars. I hope that arbitration fight was worth it for you, for the life of me I can't figure out what that value would be. Fighting for a fight's sake is stupid policy.

DALPA Contract Administration has taken many grievances to arbitration and won the vast majority of them. They have also settled many cases, some for millions of dollars of benefits. Sometimes a full frontal assault just leaves you battered and bloody.

We managed to eliminate 1000 phantom pilots and the 500 pilot staple. Either way, why do you have to bring this up again? Move along, these are not the droids you are looking for....

Thanks.....

Fatty, take a few minutes and look at the coverage system wide in the M88B category. I took a quick look. They are below required most days in ATL and CVG in April. Below required half the month in SLC and only NYC shows adequate coverage however they still have 7 days in April where they are short. These are pre month numbers. They always get worse as you move into the actual month. A quick look at this months numbers shows like 36 required today in ATL and 0 available. I looked at the last 3 days trip coverage and multiple greenslips were given out. It looks to me like the simple reason the caps are high is that they are short bodies. As you know the ALV is set by category not base. Even with that the NYC Apr numbers are for the most part right around the required numbers.

Well that makes me feel better ... I guess.

Maybe I can rolling thunder next month, who know?

-Fatty

Good luck...

That will happen until someone like me decides to bite the bullet and pcs a GS with or without conflict out of base and lug my flight case home.....just for 200% pay. :D

We had a grand total of 5 reserve md88 fo's available in ATL today, as of about 10pm last night.

Look, I wasn't trying to get into some big fight over seniority, I realize it's over. I am just trying to point out that avoiding tough decisions by always going to arbitration has a real downside risk. For a short period of time you can satisfy some primal need to fight, but then you will have live with the consequences if you lose. In any conflict whether it is seniority list integration or the number of 76 seat jets allowed, you have to evaluate the downside risk and decide if you are better off settling rather than risk losing it all. It is not satisfying if all you want to do is beat your chest, but often times it yields much better results.