Yeah, I owned CHS in the 80s as well. Tommy Condon's.....black and tans baby. The Windjammer out on Isle of Palms. Ahhhhh.....good times.

The early out won't be attractive to most of the very senior FA's. They all do 11 hour day turns, sleep at home every night, no luggage, spend nothing while at work, and take home 50k after taxes working one week a month at most. Full medical/ dental and passes. All holidays/ weekends off. 6 weeks of paid vacation per year and sick days. So it might be more accurate to say they work one week every two months. The ultimate part time job! Nobody would quit that. If the company was truly interested in culling the top of the FA list, they'd stop building 11 hour one day trips.

Unlimited 50 seat jets.

No the 70 seater was certified at 70 seats and DAL put a FC in. It does not change the number at all.

yeah except the guidance for the upcoming AE is displacements down to cover small jet stuff so they just keep kicking themselves with training because they keep underestimating who's going to bid what. Instead of hire to cover the bottom stuff they'd rather displace down and ripple the training cycles only to have to retrain guys going back up next year? these guys are doing it ass backwards...:rolleyes:

George,

Airlines never do it that way for many reasons. Biggest one is when the time comes that we do need that many pilots, they are in a "emergency" situation and one in which relief from the pilots will help.

They have already stated that they cannot hire the number needed in the peak years. Granted that is a decade away, but thinning the numbers out, or preemptive hiring makes the most sense.

There are not going to be a ton of qualified pilots out there when the time comes. We may be doing the Capt thing the way they do in Asia, with a 200 hr wonder kid next to us in a 700,000 lb jet!! :eek:

Same here! If contract 2012 does not restore our pay, I'm out the door as well. In fact, I have some gigs short-listed already... each of them pays more than twice what I'm making now at Delta. There all a lot of opportunities out there. In fact, if the management wants to try furlough to scare us, I say BRING IT ON! In fact, I would be delighted. But I won't give a single concession on scope nor would settle for anything less than restoration of my 40% paycut.

Looking at the bigger picture for a second; You must ask yourself why with the new 12 month training freeze for new hires, they are opting to create a massive training event for a maybe 200 88 positions over the next few bids. My guess is Flt Ops wants too, RA say no! He knows we are going to be in acquisition of assets and or an acquisition of all or part of an airline that will either have overlap, or excess pilots due to work rule changes, and does not want to hire more pilots than he knows he will need. The training events downward are cheaper in the long term.

Furthermore, if we are the airline that buys Kelly's 717's it makes more sense to create a long and short program to the jet and have everyone propositioned on the 88.

Sucky, but reality. This is the only bid they can really do this with. Waiting until fall means that they will need to start working on 2013 and 2014 staffing were the WB flying will be a lot more even than we are seeing now.

nevermind...

Wait, we used to fly nonstop from MSP to HNL, but then dropped it, so obviously there aren't enough people in Minnesota or the upper Midwest that want to go to Hawaii. Nope, not enough.

That is exactly what a lot of the pilots telling me they are looking are saying. There are even some junior capts looking at bailing if this contract does not restore a lot of this career.