Originally Posted by 80ktsClamp (Post 1017575)

What you and particularly sailingfun fail to understand is the ridiculous amount of soft pay that they make. My friends that work there come out of short trips with a seemingly impossible amount of credit to someone that works under our contract.

Originally Posted by forgot to bid (Post 1017590)

If that Viking picture is ALPA President LM, then this is the oil painting Carl will have made when he's voted DPA President:

http://technabob.com/blog/wp-content...r_painting.jpg

Originally Posted by BigGuns (Post 1017589)

Propaganda or not the union shouldn't be trying to down play it, they should be using it as a rally cry!

Originally Posted by alfaromeo (Post 1017570)

Much has been made about the Southwest welcome packet and the numbers they post about how well they are doing. I believe SWAPA is doing a good job representing their pilot and I am not trying to bash them, but I think they might have played a little fast and loose with their numbers in their opening presentation. Let’s not forget that they still have their seniority integration to go and SWAPA’s main argument so far to AirTran pilots is “you should be happy to be stapled to the bottom of our list.” I am pretty sure that this welcome packet was meant to reinforce that message.


For instance much has been made about a SWA Captain making $230,000 per year and working 12 days a month. Let’s examine those numbers. Their current pay (from the packet) is maxed out at $186.06 per TRIP which means their HOURLY pay rate is about $212. Divide $212 into $230,000 and you get 1085 hours or 90.5 hours per month. If they only worked 12 days that means they got paid 7.5 hours per day, yet they say their average duty day is 9 hours. In fact, that assumes that all of their Captains are at the maximum pay, if you take into account pilots that are not yet at their maximum then the numbers get worse. I am sorry but that is just not possible. My guess is that they are playing a few games here.


For instance, they say that the majority of regular lines have 17 days off per month. They say their reserves have 15/16 days off per month. Yet their entire pilot group averages 18 days off per month. That doesn’t add up. What they are doing is taking into account reserve days not worked, sick days, vacation days, and other days where you were paid but didn’t actually fly; not dishonest, but if you are going to compare then you have to compare apples to apples.

For instance Delta pilots average about 28-29 days of vacation per year that equates to about 16 days of pay. They also average around 15 days of sick time per year. If you then add in reserve days not worked, time spent awaiting OE, and many other items, you can quickly get to Delta pilots averaging 12 days or less “worked” per month. I don’t want to get into definitional games here, but remember, the SWAPA message is to convince the AirTran pilots to accept a highly unbalanced seniority integration so they are the ones playing a few games.


Let’s look at the pay rate again. Their 737 rate is $212 and ours is $174. On the surface there appears to be a 22% difference. Our pay rate also includes 13% in retirement contributions so our effective rate is $197 when you include all cash compensation. However, that tells an unbalanced story also.

The SWAPA contract has a company 401K match that their pilots can use to increase their compensation. In order to get a 13% retirement contribution, a SWA pilot would have to use 6.5% of their pay as their contribution and the company would match 6.5%. That means that to get equal retirement contributions, the effective pay rate for Delta is $197 and for SWA is $226 or a difference of 15%. That gap will narrow next year when we receive a 5% increase in total compensation (4+1). SWA is slated to get a 1-3% pay rate increase in September, depending upon their company’s operating margin (you see, those statistics matter!).


My point is that people take this pamphlet, which is meant to sway the AirTran pilots’ view of this merger, and try to make it like it’s a true contract comparison. It is not. If ALPA tried to play these types of semantic games with you, you would cry foul.

Originally Posted by Flamer (Post 1017588)

If ALPAs opener is what I think it will be, I bet that 50% will happen very quick. If ALPAs defense is "these guys won't vote us out during negotiations" they are in for a surprise.

Originally Posted by RockyBoy (Post 1017600)

Do you have buddies at SWA?? I do and I've seen what they make and how much they work. I don't care what you or anyone from ALPA tries to sell, they make WAY more than us and work WAY less than us.

I don't know who you are, but if you have anything to do with ALPA it is people who act like you, and Salingfun, that have pushed 1/4 of the Delta pilots to support DPA and are doing a great job of helping them get even more cards on a daily basis. Good job, keep up the good work. Hopefully you can help us get a union that will take what SWA makes and fight like hell to get that plus more for Delta pilots instead of trying to tell us we don't know what we are talking about.

Originally Posted by sailingfun (Post 1017513)

That metric is better because there is a substantial difference between us and Southwest in that regard. Revenue also provides the means to pay pilots. I have seen the total block hour numbers between Delta and SW. If you compare the 737 we would only need a 8 to 10 percent raise in pay and status quo on everything else to be equal to SW. I want a whole lot more then a 10 percent raise in the next contract. SW is not my goal but seems to be for a lot of people on the forum.

In the rotation you looked at your not comparing hours to hours. The credit numbers are in the SW trip system. A trip is worth 52 minutes.

Originally Posted by RockyBoy (Post 1017600)

Do you have buddies at SWA?? I do and I've seen what they make and how much they work. I don't care what you or anyone from ALPA tries to sell, they make WAY more than us and work WAY less than us.

I don't know who you are, but if you have anything to do with ALPA it is people who act like you, and Salingfun, that have pushed 1/4 of the Delta pilots to support DPA and are doing a great job of helping them get even more cards on a daily basis. Good job, keep up the good work. Hopefully you can help us get a union that will take what SWA makes and fight like hell to get that plus more for Delta pilots instead of trying to tell us we don't know what we are talking about.