Yes, although USAir was also losing money trying to fly the biggest O&D market in the galaxy on high CASM fuel sucking RJ's to begin with. Duplicating their failed business plan was hardly the goal I thought. Meanwhile JB is dominating NYC domestic with an all mainline product with inherently lower CASM and that's almost exclusively out of JFK, where NY'ers supposedly don't really even want to fly. LGA is supposed to be super premium NYC flying yet we can't even put our smallest mainline planes on 90-something percent of the new routes.

As for the terminal bridge, I'm sure we will be bussing pax between the two while the bridge is built, but like I mentioned earlier, I don't expect a whole lot of connections there in the first place. Very few routes flow well through NYC for that and those that do can be done through other hubs just as easily in most cases anyway. The slot swap was primarily about single point O&D and the fact that its 90-something percent outsourced RJ's means mainline won't get very much "feed" in the first place. As an added bonus, we could see down-gauging in JFK and EWR as a result of this if the O&D pax really do prefer LGA. Just enough to outsource, not quite enough to justify mainline. High CASM, inferior product, few to no additional Delta pilot jobs. This is shaping up to make the AS code share check valve look like a good deal. At least we get some widebody feed from the mass outsourcing and narrow-body stagnation on the west coast. All we will get in LGA is supposedly revenue that we hope we will get a piece of. As if we haven't fallen for that trick before.

 

This break sponsored by "Friends of ALPA," a political inaction committee made up of underemployed pilots. Cheers to sitting around, growing a beard and looking at pictures of Mila Kunis.

 

Hummm. I know you are right and I admit I don't look at this stuff every day, but why am I wrong?

 

 

What I fear is that by the time the real horse trading starts we'll be starting to enjoy attrition, jets will be coming off mod lines, -900's will be showing up and we will be working our way back to even with Air France. Everybody seems to forget scope when their career starts doing a little better.

We need to remember scope from the perspective of saving this profession, even if we are not the direct beneficiaries when we get our chance at the plate.

 

Bar, I guess I'm not the only one who has not flown since Thanksgiving. I did get my six short calls and I think I may have to fly the 24,25 & 26 though.

 

The bridge is just a red-herring, another talking point to make the pilots shut-up and go away. We fly our pax out of T2, T3 and T4 at JFK and nobody mentions the busses between T3 and T4 as a hindrance...

It's the same lame talking point all over again, we'll really be stupid to be placated with a one-liner.

One more time:
What's good for Delta isn't always good for Delta pilots...

Cheers
George

 

Why don't we bid on SC days? We (almost) bid on everything else.

 

Yep - 100% correct. And the same thing will happen when the company opens in section 6 with a total POS. DALPA will start spinning immediately.

I have been hearing this crap since about 2003 from DALPA:

"We need a codeshare with CAL/NWA because......"

"We need to take a 32% paycut to avoid BK because...."

"The company needs 76 seaters to feed our JFK operation."

"We can't discuss the plan but you will like it."

OK - to be fair they have done some good things also - The SOT did a great job. We recovered some of the 23K stuff - well done on both accounts guys.

I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt through negotiations but in my humble opinion if DALPA does not deliver substantial improvements in section 6 they will be voted off the property within a year.

Scoop

 

This would take away the companies ability to perform "leveling" where all reserves for a given month on a given airplane/base share the flying more or less equally.

Pilots, given the ability to choose which days they are on call/short call, could actually effect their likelihood of getting called in a given week (some might argue that gives seniority its due and helps pilots once again control their lives somewhat better). Bottom line, the company is only interested in constructively engaging when they feel the outcome is more to their benefit than what the pilots are getting. I don't think this one would qualify. That said, when you get a moment, check out how Alaska pilots are able to bid/trade/give away/pick up. and what their reserve guarantees are (I'll get you started....short call pays 79 hours, long call pays 75 hours).

The thing that will be really disappointing is to find out 6 months down the road how many missed opportunities went by as rules are changed without memrat in order to help the company adapt to the new FTDT. Leverage smeverage.