I am ass/u/ming that we will all be getting a pay increase in the upcoming contract. The very top end of the group.. fewer than 10% would NOT get as big a percentage as the bottom of the list, that's true, but at this time, a fair part of that group has an intact retirement in place. It would not come at the "expense" of those guys at all anyway. And as far as being at the junior end of the band, since you and I are both on the same aircraft and over 12, we are getting paid the same.. (another stupid thing, but that is a different discussion)

 

I agree, he has the brains to be Chairman if he desires to be. Not sure if he does, as I have not asked him but I agree with his strategic mindset.

As for stock grants. I have talked about this with a few reps. Grants are fine, above an acceptable level of compensation. Granted and vested immediately so that they can be sold the second they are given. Done on a semi annual basis. 20% valuation discount on current share price. Options to vest in 401K on a share by share basis. Would like to see some sort of Roth option as well.

Profit sharing needs to be tripled and paid quarterly.

 

.....Delta Air's Feb. passenger revenue rose 13 pct.
Delta Air Lines says Feb. passenger revenue rose 13 percent; fuel prices climbed, too

Associated Press – 2 hours 30 minutes ago


ATLANTA (AP) -- Delta Air Lines Inc. said Friday that a key measure of revenue climbed by 13 percent in February, as occupancy rose on flights to Europe and fares across the Pacific increased.

Airlines have been seeing higher passenger revenue for each seat flown one mile in part because they've been raising fares to offset higher fuel prices. Much of the extra money paid for fares goes back out the door to buy more expensive fuel.

UBS analyst Kevin Crissey wrote that Delta's revenue increase is "indicative of continued strong demand but not rapidly accelerating pricing."

Delta also said it paid $3.35 per gallon for jet fuel in February. That suggests "importantly higher" fuel prices in the first quarter, Crissey wrote. That prompted him to predict a first-quarter loss of 17 cents per share, versus his previous expectation for a loss of 4 cents per share. Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected Delta to break even.

The February increase was about a percentage point lower than Delta had expected. Benign weather allowed it to complete 99.7 percent of its scheduled flights last month. With so few cancellations, Delta had slightly more available seats than it would have, pushing per-seat revenue down slightly.

Delta also said February traffic rose 2.6 percent from February 2011, to 12.99 billion revenue passenger miles, or one paying passenger flown one mile.

The number of passengers boarded rose 4.1 percent to 11.4 million.

Those passengers had fewer seats waiting for them compared to February 2011. Delta's capacity, measured as available seat miles, fell 1.7 percent to 16.9 billion. Domestic capacity fell 0.6 percent, while international capacity fell 3.3 percent.

With more people looking for fewer seats, occupancy rose 3.2 percentage points to 76.9 percent. The biggest jump was a 6.3 percentage point increase in occupancy on flights across the Atlantic, to 67.4 percent.

Shares of Atlanta-based Delta rose 15 cents to $9.79 in afternoon trading.

 

I think under the right circumstances it can work...i.e. all the pilots in a certain "band" are at the top pay scale. If we as pilots can agree what that rate should be, and for bargaining purposes it can shown that such costs are offset by less training costs (not always necessary to move up in equipment for pay purposes).

Of course one of the problems with this model being that there will always be pilots on the bigger equipment complaining that they are underpaid (as we have seen voiced here)

 

Stock grants.. if they hit my account before market open on payday, and are unrestricted, would be fine with me, but the company would never go for that for the reasons you cited.

 

I would agree with unrestricted stock but not options.....been there lost my a$$ Also, how often would they be issued? But as you said, it would never happen due to dilution that the big boys would hold. I remember when we tried this at NWA Gary Wilson screamed like a stuck pig

I know the old heads have read my rant on profit sharing.......it's a con job to make you "feel" part of the living organism we call Delta. But at least it's given out at the whim of the accountants. Ohhhhhhh just had a thought, is that why our CFO is going to spend more time with his family? He paid out too much in profit sharing?

Ferd

 

On another nudder subject...............

Has anyone ever had laundry done at the Atlanta Hilton downtown? Long Europe coming up and I don't hit AMS till the end. I don't think I own that many tidy whities.

Ferd

 

Simply stating facts...insofar that they may cause disunity, I apologize for stating them.

 

I think my difficulty with pay banding is that it really puts the cart (pay) before the horse (scope). Without ironclad (adequate) scope, I think pay banding is a bad idea. With ironclad scope (Delta seniority list pilots fly delta passengers. period) I think it is not so bad an idea and workable, but also not perfectly optimal.

That said, merger, fragmentation, acquisition language would have to be updated in a similarly ironclad way.

In our seniority based world, it will always be worse to be junior than to be senior. Pay banding doesn't necessarily lower the ladder down to the junior any more than productivity pay pulls the ladder up. All it does is encourage the senior to fly the type of trips/aircraft they prefer to fly and the junior get what's left.

That's my brief take on the whole thing.

 

This idea was floated by a former high level rep.

His point was that Wall Street and the Company would choke on a raise of anything more than 15 % and that we needed to look at alternative means of securing income.

To me it did not make sense as I ran the numbers quickly in my head to close the gap between his 15 and my minimum raise number that is close to double his stated %age. Not a math whizz, but that would be alot of shares at the current 8-9 range being granted.

That would then dilute the outstanding shares once they began issuing more shares to cover their grants. Now Wall Street would really choke.

My suggestion was to substantially boost per diem to lets say $10/$15 hr or so. Non Taxable as it stands now but don't know how the Gov't would like that. You could use a robust per diem and a 15% raise as the published rate and get close to closing the restoration gap.


Ideas anyone?