Originally Posted by N9373M (Post 1067643)

Forrest Gump, wilst being interviewed by Dick Cavett, with John Lennon on his right.

I gotta get a life, although it was filmed in my home town, Fightertown - Beaufort, SC. (as was The Great Santini, The Big Chill, and some Streisand film - she complained about the "noise")

Originally Posted by Pineapple Guy (Post 1067927)

Denny, I googled "Delta Air Lines Form 5500". Up popped a link to download that off the "Disabled Delta Pilots & Survivor's Association" website. If you reference that, it pretty much validates what slowplay said earlier. As of 6/30/10, the D&S has about $1B in assets, but $1.8B in liabilities, with the majority of those liabilities to pay current survivors and future survivors of current retirees. Considering, its substantially underfunded at present, it seems a bit unfair to drain the fund further to pay me a future survivor benefit, unless, of course, we want to negotiate to greatly increase the funding. But that would be significant cash, and I'd rather have that in my paycheck, rather than the D&S Trust.

Originally Posted by gloopy (Post 1068002)

So do we still get the LGA slots no matter what, or is this some nefarious SWA scheme to make us think we are getting them, ramp up and invest tons of money, only to be told to give up more slot charity to "most favored airline" or the deal's off?

As for any 320 bases in the future, a whopping zero percent of that is net growth unless we order more 320's, which we apparently are no where near doing. So this swap or anything else still looks like a capacity neutral reshuffle with the only potential winners being DCI and probably Alaska somehow. Unless we're getting a lot more 90's (or equivalent) as that fleet growth barely seems to make up for the 9's going away as it is.

Originally Posted by johnso29 (Post 1068087)

Incorrect. You can increase the pilot block hours/utilization of the airplanes and that requires more pilots. You don't necessarily need more airplanes to hire pilots.

Originally Posted by Lifeisgood (Post 1068058)

I heard as soon as the first sim is unbolted in MSP they are ready to rent A320 sim time in Miami. So the moving itself should not be a issue.

Originally Posted by forgot to bid (Post 1067982)

Is the DOT mad at SWA?

Originally Posted by forgot to bid (Post 1068075)

Yeah... gotta love the $100 taxi + tolls + tips to get from Queens to EWR.

How do NYC crews handle that? Because I see 4-days that start and end in EWR on the 88 that show at 0600 and end at 2300.

Originally Posted by Scoop (Post 1068069)

Yeah - No kidding. A few months ago I complained that our bid package was the worst I had even seen at DAL. Well we have a new winner the November DAL 737 Bid package:

58 rotations without red-eye flights.
74 rotations that include red-eye flights.

And for the piece de resistance - 45 four day rotations that include red-eyes and pay between 17 and 21 hours!!!

35% of our rotations are four day trips with red-eyes that pay less than 21 hours!!!! :eek:

Thanks to our great duty period average contract.

The ALPA guys keep saying that "in total" the Alaska code share is good for the Delta Pilots. Although I am doubtful of that comment, it is pretty clear the LAX guys are being disproportionately impacted by the Alaska agreement.

Scoop