Smells like the classic control of information. DALPA has a desire and a need to control and manipulate the message. Example: the contract survey with leading ?'s, and the mirroring to select carriers in the contract comparison.
.

Now, we are still waiting for a promised comparison to AFKLM with less than two weeks prior to the closing of the contract survey.... more controlled information.

Slowplay is already massaging and molding the information, or truth, so that it can be presented in a form that is exceptable to DALPA and their goals and agenda. Again, their theme of manipulation. I say, release it in its raw form. We are intelligent enough to see and determine the good, the bad and the ugly.



**Post Script. I searched and could find no reference to European CLA's being private documents. Could you please site your sources on this Slowplay?**

 

where do you get started finding those directions? I have the same prob

Thanks

 

It will be interesting to see when it comes out. I got the idea like ACL's friend that a lot of the spicifics were off limits and only general terms could be used.

TO did say that the AF/KLM gross pay was significantly higher than ours but net was similar due to taxes. The problem I see is those pilots get a lot of "nationalized" benefits from those taxes while we take a lot of those benefits from our net. I would like to see some kind of comparison on "equivalent" compensation kind of like our EKSM JV metric. Realistically that is probably going to be impossible to do.

As to a government mandated vacation system, no thanks.

-vpr

 

My point is that WHO CARES what the "net takehome" is!

What is the COST to the Corporation per pilot? If an AF/KL pilot pays more taxes, it doesn't affect the corporation ANY differently!

Since we are in a JV, all the costs and revenues are shared.

This means when DAL per pilot gross costs are lower than the per pilot gross cost of AF/KL pilots, DAL pilots are subsidizing AF/KL pilot pay!

I want to see that eliminated.

Per pilot cost is the metric the company needs to consider, and taxes taken from that are a function of government, and the burden of the individuals who live in that nation.

 

Ok boys, lets get back to something REALLY important.

Was in ATL for 3 days earlier in the week doing queep at the school house. Good news for you younger guys......there were NEW HIRE Flight Attendants roaming the halls and taking computer tests.

One interesting note, talked to an Asian girl in the cafeteria thinking she was in from overseas for CQ. Turns out she was an American new hire and going to be based in NYC. Then noticed an Asian guy talking on his cell outside one of the classrooms. New speakers I'm assuming. Hummmmm, wonder if we are slowing closing the overseas bases after all. I never thought they could find all the dialects in enough numbers they would need for China in this country.

Like I said. Hummmmmmmm

 

.....................

 

FWIW, I spoke to a couple of new hire FAs a while back who said it was next to impossible to get hired if you didn't have a second language.

 

True dat. A Hispanic lady at my favorite Mexican Food joint here in PHX got hired. The good news is she is also good looking in addition to speaks Spanish

Not that I would notice with my wife sitting there

 

Trip Rig = 3.5:1 which basically means for every 3.5 Time Away From Base (TAFB) on your rotation you will receive 1 hour of credit. This is pretty lame and definitely needs to be improved.

Duty Period Average (DPA) is 5:15 per Duty period. This is totally unacceptable and a major detriment to quality of life for DAL Pilots.

First off its Duty period vice daily average which means you can have only 3 duty periods even on a 4 day trip. *** This is done via layovers greater than 24 hours so that if you are a 4 day trip, fly on every one of those 4 days but have a long layover you may only qualify for 3 duty periods. Theoretically you can have 2 duty periods on a 4 day trip but then you will be protected by the abysmal 3.5:1 trip rig. Trip rig credit is very inefficient for the pilots and not how you want to make money.

Secondly, 5:15 in itself is pretty poor. So we have a crappy system (DPA) governed by a low average. Many guys on APC have said what they would like to see instead. For example, a 6 hour daily average which would basically mean 6 hours minimum for a one day, 12 hours for a two day, 18 hours for a three day etc. The beauty of this is that if the company could produce more efficient trips the cost increase to the company is not linear. This means going from 5:15 to 6:00 approximately a 13% increase can cost the company a lot less than 13%.

The problem DAL currently has with scheduling efficiency is that marketing drives the flight schedule with little or no thought to pilot efficiency. Throw in multiple aircraft serving each city along with DCI service and the trip construction problem starts getting similar to playing three dimensional chess - very complicated. I am not syaing the company cannot do it better - its not like we have a bunch of monks locked away in a monastery cranking out the rotations (although they might do a better job) but it is all run by a computer. The computer inputs and variables are what determines our fate.

Throw in other restrictions like the companies minimum 12 hour reset after red-eyes (unilaterally imposed by the company) and you you are stuck with guys sitting on their arse for 30 hours.

Got to go - I will let someone else explain Duty Rig.

*** If you really want to directly see the negative affects of the DPA system on QOL pull up the LAX 737 bid package sometime and look over the 4900 series of rotations. This will convey the importance of good rigs far far better than reading about it on a forum and bring it home in a way we can all understand.

Hope this helps - Scoop

 

If it turns out that AF/KLM pilots make less than us, will you want to eliminate the injustice by asking for a pay cut?