Is this a narcoposting event Bar? Was that summer of 2008?

 

That was a great show. HBO sucks for canceling it.

 

My thoughts exactly while I read a few pages back mention of furlough. Give me a break--record freakin' profits, ramped up flying this summer, etc. Sad thing is that we have some who espouse such notions and do the 4th floor's bidding.

 

The month I got hired

While in indoc, Harry Nolan gave a talk at my undergraduate school, so the wife and I got a char next to the President of UPS and ate dinner with him. He outlined the upcoming Northwest merger and told me unequivocally to quit. His point was NWA had a dying network and the merger would be hell on the Delta employees as everyone came in on top of us new hires. The "Delta culture" would be replaced by Northwest's. He expected furloughs and told me I would be on the street. (impolite dinner conversation to say the least)

Things have gone a lot better than Harry estimated. He was right about the merger (back in mid 2007 when White, then Anderson & ALPA were denying it). He was right about the network dynamics. He was wrong about furloughs and the Corporate crash and burn he expected to result. I think he also was mistaken about the cultural issues. There are great (and not so great) folks from both backgrounds.

I'm on the fence about recommending Delta. It was expected 2012 would be flat and towards the end of the year we would see our first positive bid since December 2008 and the beginning of a hiring wave. That is not happening and despite early retirements there is officially no end in sight for our capacity reductions and down bids. It looks as though some people might make an entire career on the Douglas equipment.

I don't see how things could be that bad. Data points that should indicate improvement:

• Widebodies coming out of mod lines
• AF/KLM remain roughly 7 to 8% above the terms of our JV language, I expect that to get caught back up as we have metal available and AF/KLM rationalizes their money losing network
• Delta officially kicked the 100 seat jet order to this Spring. I've not read news of the cancellation (just crew room briefing reports that muddy the issue)
• An economy which is better than forecast
• Very strong revenue generation
• Management is achieving its goals (slot swap, terminal construction, etc ... which they have stated would add pilot jobs)

That is a lot to be wrong about, if what we can get with our seniority is really circling the proverbial bowl... .

I did screw up by not going to FedEx the second they started pulling from the pool. But, there were issues there too. They had a lot of >60 Flight Engineers bidding back to the left seat and the junior bases were unappealing. In retrospect the Compass divestiture was probably the signal to move on. It demonstrated our union's position towards scope & performing our own flying. Change of this policy is essential to making Delta a good place to work.

 

With the company making hundreds of billions of dollars every quarter they will have to be some pretty good artists to do that.

 

As bad as it has been for a lot of us here, I think now is definitely the right time to come to Delta & I would absolutely recommend it to any pilot looking for a major job. The movement here in a few years will be incredible and any pilot getting hired when we ramp up is going to have a great career. They're not going to be stuck at 40% on the maddog after 11+ years with the company like yours truly.

 

Emirates will be hiring direct entry captains at the Aerocrew solutions job fair that is coming up. Just saying.

Upgrade is going at about 4.5 years on the long end there right now as well.

Makes sense to shrink if you are going to be buy. Keep squeezing more RASM out of each ticket until you hit the back side of the power curve. DAL's PRASM was up 14% last month. Apparently there is no end in sight of squeezing more out of each seat. Until their PRASM drops with a further capacity reduction I do not see the trend totally reversing itself.

That said, you get to a point where you domestic route structure becomes inefficient with further cuts. The next step would be a hub closure or to grow.

 

They also have a history of taking hostages. I believe we have some "49ers" from the last contract who are regulars right here on APC.

We need to be careful how we approach the trip parking issue. It is eerily similar to the "no overtime for straight pay" campaign that got the 49ers in trouble. Trip parking is clearly a contract violation but since it has been sanctioned by DALPA it would now be considered status quo. Once the contract is open, posting a picture of Delta pilots stabbing each other would be harassment and illegal concerted activity.
I'm very glad to hear that DALPA is going to do something about trip parking before the Section 6 negotiations begin. We don't want to be negotiating for hostages like last time.

acl's idea of a bank solution would be fine. It solves the problem of guys unable to fill up because their category only has 10 day trips. You could also use a "rolling average" of credit hours over 90 or 180 days. Whatever.
There are fixes available but we have to stop the 100+ hour months that are being built by the trip parking people. That is hurting all of us. Especially when it is so prevalent in the top paying categories.

ALV+15 is in there for a reason. The contract definitely protects us from ourselves as well as from management. Let's respect the contract.

If its true "a fix is in the works" then DALPA deserves kudos.

 

Blue,

I like your Avatar. Looking forward to that vote.

 

Hub closure, hub closure, hub closure.