Delta adds extra flights to accommodate Cairo passengers
February 1, 2011

While nonstop flights between the U.S. and Cairo remain suspended due to civil unrest, Delta is adding extra flights from Cairo to cities in Europe to help reaccommodate customers. *On Tuesday, Delta operated an extra flight from Cairo to Athens and on Wednesday plans to operate an extra flight from Cairo to Rome, with continuing service to JFK.

Since nonstop service was suspended Saturday, Delta also has been working with joint venture partner Air France-KLM to accommodate customers on upgauged flights through Amsterdam and Paris

At this time, Delta has not been contacted to work directly with the U.S. government to charter relief flights but will continue to reaccommodate customers via Europe as long as there is demand.

 

It's 78 degrees and sunny here.....again. I'm dreading going back to work in a few weeks. Getting paid to not work is everything I thought it could be.

 

Makes sense. Stop in FCO so that CAI is a turn and crews will not overnight there. Air France has not stopped any of their service.

 

Well I mean that's the French for ya (assuming they're not overnights).... I'd like to think Delta is a little more practical than that! I'm glad to hear no one will be staying there. Hopefully the turns go smoothly. I've heard of police officers over there requiring people to bribe them in order to get on planes. If any more light is shed on this I'd love to know.

 

Can we talk about scope? Wasn't it last year that Moak signed a letter of agreement letting the company slide on its alleged scope violation because we were afraid of arbitration? Why did this LOA let the company order even more outsourced airplanes? I can see letting them slide to avoid arbitration, but to leave their interpretation open to order even more planes? Come on. I don't think I've ever been more upset about scope than the one yesterday. ALPA will not even admit there's a problem. They keep pointing out that overall DCI jets are decreasing. What's scary to me is that replacing 50 seaters with 70-76 seaters is worse than ordering more 50 seaters, and ALPA keeps pointing out that we are winning the scope battle. We have 4 hour flights across the country being flown by these planes that Delta just ordered more of.

 

What orders? The RAH jets are already being used on the Frontier part of the certificate, and are being paid for by RAH.

What I don't understand is giving a competitor a CPA with a gauranted profit so they can subsidize their other operations and compete with you.

 

I raised that same point directly with LM last year and he brushed it off as a non-issue, I had also addressed it with my reps and they also didn't care.

 

At least ALPA has a seat at the table!

 

These are part of the 255 jets allowed under our joint contract. The very contract which was approved by our own pilot group. Plus RAH already owns these E170's, & will shift them from the Frontier system to the DAL system.

The LOA that Lee Moak signed to avoid arbitration has absolutely nothing to do with the RAH E170 deal. The only thing that LOA allowed was to keep the number of 76 seaters at 153.

 

We decided not to go to arbitration because there was zero upside to that choice. We could only loose. The company agreed to Dalpa's interpretation of the scope section going forward. They got to keep the extra RJ's. At the time with the jets being delivered the company would have been legal for those extra RJ's before we could get done with the arbitration.
We also got some limited furlough protection. Not one Delta pilot even the most hard core scope hawks has told me that this was a bad choice after they actually read the decision and the facts behind it.
Had we gone to arbitration and won with a slam dunk the company would have then been legal to keep the aircraft anyway with the projected increase in mainline fleet numbers. Had we lost the company would have been able to carry even more RJ's for however long the scope section remained in future contracts. With the number of MD-90's now owned by Delta the agreement is limiting the RJ's now allowed. You want to fight smart not stupid.