Unfortunately...No. Sad to say. I think we're in for another race to the bottom. National Heath Care, although a very noble endeavor, is not the alligator closest to the canoe. The economy is headed for a train wreck. Probably one like that experienced during the Great Depression. Hang on guys. Furloughs will come and millions more Americans will be unemployed. Man, I just depressed myself! I guess it's 5 o'clock somewhere!

The sky really is falling.

I was looking at picture of your 88's cockpit on airliners.net. As a DC-9 pilot, your cockpit looks completely foreign to me. I can't see flying both.

In Letter 46 (the one prior to bankruptcy) we eliminated international pay on domestic legs. That was the only real contractual barrier to a combined domestic/international category. There is the training barrier, which is solely a company cost item, of giving TOE's to pilots in international categories. The 767-400 was a combined category for years before they were moved to international. That was a marketing decision.

As far as efficiency, there is not any real efficiency to combing categories, except for very small categories. For the 767/ER there may be some efficiency because they can better manage the transition from summer to winter schedule without having tons of pilot on reserve in the winter. They could level out their pilot requirements by having NYC ER crews do more domestic flying in the winter.

The NWA 757 category has been a combined category for many years, perhaps they can comment on their feelings about separate vs. combined categories since they have more experience with it. I think they do domestic, Hawaii, North Atlantic, and Narita interport flying.

Costs too much & it's a safety hazard. Bite your tongue! :p :D

I agree, and see this coming shortly. I also understand that the 757's of NWA will be considered ER, and they will do both domestic and international flying.

So Boeing is going to re-wing the 777, now that its 15 years old. Intriguing, can they put a hump on the top of it so its easier to load cargo in and out and put another two engines so you have 0 ETOPS issues? That'd be awesome.


I'm on short call.

I'm bored.

I just read the AWST article on that from Day 1 at the Paris Airshow too! I think it is great. Awesome jet, and in light of AF447 they may be thinking that composites are not quite to where they need to be. Who knows.

I love the 777. Not that you need to Fix that wing. It is about as close to perfect as you can get. I would love to see what they are really going to do to it.

Heyas,

There actually were never any separate domestic or international categories at NWA, at least since I've been here.

There have been aircraft that did predominantly one or the other, but it was never a separate bid category. Even back in the days of the DC-10, you could bid international and domestic trips in the same month. "Avoid international" or "avoid domestic" were bid commands that most used if they wanted one or the other.

Most NWA guys will give you a blank stare if you ask them about what they think about this. To most of us, the separation seems kind of a goofy way to artificially restrict bidding flexibility for people or to puff up one's ego ("I'm on the ER":rolleyes:). It's probably the same way the fDAL guys think about our separate block/reserve categories, which, IMHO, has far more utility for pilots' QoL.

The 757 "grew" into international flying over time. You can literally go from a domestic trip, to a European trip to a NRT Interport trip in the same month, if the trips are small enough. We keep Europe plates in our bags, but you get a fresh set of Pacific plates each time you go out to NRT, so you don't have to lug them around all the time. Overall, it's just not a big deal.

The two systems are a product of the respective pilot groups. If you want to keep the two separate to drive up staffing requirements, I'm all for that. OTOH, I'm a commuter, and I really LIKE knowing I'll have a block(line) every month, and would prefer getting displaced to something else rather than go to reserve.

After SOC, there are a LOT of things that are going to change (again). I suspect that in the next PWA, there are going to be changes on that end, as well. Hopefully, there'll be a nice cross-pollination by then.

Nu

I know, oil is at $200.00 a barrel right now, we're all scr3wd. Wait a minute...................that was last summer http://usera.ImageCave.com/Dr5115/brickwall.gif

Thank god it is not at 150 a barrel.
Our problem this year is people will travel if the prices are rock bottom. No one buys two weeks out, so they are rock bottom. 140 rt from NYC to LAX. YGTBSM! We cannot make money if we put people in the cargo hold!