A pilot who goes on the one trip a month retirement program does impact manning. In the end the number of block hours each pilot flies determines the companies needs. If we all started flying half schedules the company would have to double the number of pilots.
Historically we have also had a significant number of pilots lose their medicals which adds to the attrition rate. I know two pilots that are done flying after medical issues from Nov alone.
There has been a significant number of retirement prior to 65. The PERP program however pushed them all into one group. Most of those more the likely would have been early outs just not all in 5 months. A average of age 62 is still looking about right when you factor in medicals lost, Early retirement programs and normal early retirements.

FWIW, pilots on disability get the same DC and 401K contributions that they would have received had they remained active (basically 2X the active contribution rate on 1/2 pay from LTD). And nobody gets a "match" at Delta, they are contributions whether or not you put in any money.

I'm speaking of specific pilots I know who retired at the age of 56. FWIW.

I believe you are mistaken regarding the "no match obviously" comment.

My recollection is that when you are on long term disability Delta's defined contribution percentage actually doubles. It makes sense if you think about it...

When you are on long term disability your income from Delta (actually the Disability and Survivorship trust) is half of what it was and thus their retirement contribution would be halved as well. Using the assumption that one's retirement should not suffer from a disability event, Delta's contribution is doubled so that when you return to active service your retirement account will be essentially whole, and your ability to retire on time is not affected.

I showed that to my wife. She didn't get it. :(

I apologize.

As someone who has driven the US BBQ tour of America (Memphis, KC City, Texas, and North Carolina) for a vacation, I assure you, what was served to us the day was conduct unbecoming.

I hope the CA never sees these posts. He was a nice guy and a good CA, but the obsession with Top Gun was a bit crazy and humorous to me.

Speaking of which, I really enjoy flying with old former military guys who haven't realized that they're no longer in the military. (extreme sarcasm) What happened in the shrink's office and how did these crazies make it through?

I once flew a 4-day trip with one of the initial cadre F-15C pilots. After learning that I was a low life tanker pilot, every comment or suggestion I made ended with "what would you know, you're a tanker pilot". No joke. :rolleyes:

Nope. Delta Policy

Made a simple phone call on the AF agreement. What was not noted here is that if the company falls out of compliance in a measurement period they have to come back into compliance in 12 months for the 3 year look back period. That means that if they allow Delta to fall even a small amount behind the 48.5 percent number they would have to have a massive increase in flying in the correction year to get back to the rolling 3 year average. It in effect makes its very difficult if not impossible for the company to fall below the average it needs. The routes picked up from AF this winter are to insure the company does not fall into that situation. A significant portion of the reductions to Europe are to allow for the lie flat seat mod on the 7ER fleet. There will be a issue again next winter as they complete the mod line for the aircraft. As we pick up the flying in the Spring AF will pick back up the ORD route. SEA may stick with us.

They key to becoming an "easy millionaire" is to get the timing exactly right. That isn't possible for a "doom and gloomer" any more than it is for a cockeyed bull rally optimist.

The fact remains that you can't print trillions out of thin air, backed by nothing, have 11 to 12 figure unfunded entitlement obligations, multiple trillion dollar wars and have your currency recently backstop over 150 trillion in BOA and other derivatives in addition to the other bailouts and expect things to hum along like all is well.

We will emerge on the other side of this as the strongest economic superpower if we only get part of the recovery portion of all this right. But we will eat many years of Carter style stagflation (even our CEO says that's a very large and real threat our industry and economy in general faces) with significant demand destruction.

Durable goods will be the hardest hit, but our sector will be in the thick of it to be sure. I understand why some people don't want to believe in the inevitable. I wish it weren't so but it is. Just like everyone and their broker believed in the AAA rated good as gold real estate bubble (and all the others) the much bigger dollar and debt bubbles are frothing over and being pumped up to maximum capacity as we speak. That bubble will pop. Hard. That is unavoidable at this point.

What we can do about it is get ready financially as individuals and as a company. There will be financial pain in our industry. A lot of it. There will be winners and losers. I hope we are one of the winners. It won't be all about hedging fuel, though that will be a part of it. Fuel will be highly volatile bouncing between peaks of supply/demand concerns and valleys of demand destruction. We just got a new fuel guy and I really hope he's on top of that as it plays out.

What I really hope doesn't happen is that we find ourselves with a leadership that culls mass amounts of flying just like they did after 9-11 only to watch our unit costs skyrocket and current and future start ups and LCC's grow into the market share we abandon. Numerous analysis's are predicting between a 5-15% reduction by AMR alone and that's nowhere near their worst case USAir merger scenarios so that will buy us some time.

So if I'm so smart when will the economic malaise start to play out? It depends on many variables that are still playing out in their timing, but sometime in the next 1-3 years is most likely. The later the onset, the more severe it will be, as all bubbles are, and this is the mother of all of them.

Again, it doesn't mean Mad Max or Frodo lost the ring or whatever. But it will mean companies that can't hack it are in for a world of hurt because the economy will be very rough going for a while and only the fittest will survive. There won't be bailouts on the other side of this bubble because fake printed money and cosmic levels of debt itself, the bubbles that supports all the other ones, will be the ones that pop.

People will still fly, for business and for pleasure, and cargo will still need to be moved. Just less of it than today for quite a while. I hope we are in the position to not only survive but thrive as others inevitably flounder and fade away.

I'm not trying to be a contrarian and I really wish I was wrong on this. I'm keeping more than enough in the market (traditionally, as it were) to do fairly well if none of this plays out and we magically rah rah pull out of it because we are the US and A and nothing can touch us. But I am steadily moving into cash in the near to medium term to take positions later in sectors that will do quite well when the inevitable happens. Enough to be a "millionaire"? Probably. Then again, a million won't mean as much when we retire, but I'm sure you know that.

And regardless of the economy, we are due significant improvements in all areas of our contract especially scope. We do not want to be working under a good CBA that permits half the airline to be outsourced to the lowest bidder in a protracted down economy. Heck, we don't want that even in a rip rparing economy.

Sailing,

The unfortunate truth is that no one outside of RD and perhaps TO really understood what was in this MOU. We are in compliance with our contract, but not with the spirit, intent, or understanding of a 50/50 split. George, ACL, me and RD all have the same idea about how this works. Where we all differ is the calculations of EASK's. RD has the official answer (which is probably the number posted by ACL) and George is running his own numbers.

George is right that we should not be satisfied with "Air France pilots are angry" just as the anger of Comair pilots was not a reliable metric of job protection in the last decade. IMHO management is indicating a reluctance to comply with the spirit of our agreement and D-ALPA's track record is clear ... the conversation about scope grievances always ends with "what can we get for that?"

Further, the JV language leaves negotiations open, such that further renegotiation can take place via a MOU, not subject to membership ratification, or even the vote of our Reps. In effect, the NCC, MEC Chair, or GCC can change the most critical part of our contract unilaterally.

I gave up complaining about this because I could not figure out how to unscrew it.