Here's the one problem with your argument. When fuel prices go up, the company can often cover that increased cost by raising fares because all the other airlines are also paying more for fuel and need to raise their fares too. However, if our pilot costs go up significantly in relation to all the other airlines, raising fares to cover the increased cost isn't going to work because the other airlines are going to refuse to raise their fares and we'll have to match them. That's why it's so important for UCAL and AMR to get their pilot costs up too or we're not going to get much of an improvement. Delta doesn't care what they pay us as long as it's not out of line with what all the other airlines are paying their pilots.

This is a good point.

If you look at the costs of a 30% pay raise, for instance, it would cost the company about $423M a year. The company is forecasting a $1.9B profit this year.

$130,000 x 10,850 x 30% = $423M.

The company can afford it, we can set the bar, other companies can follow & keep pay more in line.

I'm with you, I'll take that flying with no raise. I'll let it stay there if its sunset and we get a hefty raise. I'll vote no over scope before anything else.


Our rates can stay the same. Just normal 4-5% yoy increases we've been having, no big jump.

Except I want quarterly revenue, not profit, but revenue sharing on top of it all.

Air Traffic Rises in February - Yahoo! Finance

February was a busy month for air carriers, with traffic showing an increase. Airline traffic is measured in billions of revenue passenger miles (:RPM), or revenue generated per mile per passenger.

........

The February traffic for the second largest U.S. airline Delta Air Lines increased 13.0%, given a strong increase in Atlantic load factor and better yields in Pacific regions. Domestic and international traffic increased 2.5% and 1.7%, respectively. Capacity declined 1.7% year over year. Given the decline in capacity versus increase in traffic, the carrier’s load factor registered a growth of 240 bps year over year to 79.5%.

Exactly. We can't wait around for someone else to do the hard part for us. It's obvious that UCAL aren't getting anywhere, and AMR isn't helping either. If we want this career to turn around, we'll have to change the trend line ourselves. Let them follow us if it has to go down like that.

To pattern bargain up, one group has to achieve gains first. We're up to bat now.

But what would that really do? Honestly.

If that became a precondition, SkyWest and Republic would simply vote in ALPA. Yay for ALPA, right? But what difference would it really make? Its not like the mothership is going to start witholding signatures on agreements to send a message. If that was done to ALPA regional A and ALPA regional B got the contract, A would obviously sue.

You would still have the exact same internal pressures at every single regional carrier to sell their souls for the next big jet order, no matter how many aces have to be dealt. You would still have the same pressures to undercut yourself just to keep existing flying. I mean hey, even a large pay cut is still a pay raise if you get to upgrade, right? "Sign here and every pilot on property will be a captain in under 18 months" will continue unabated even if every regional carrier must be ALPA.

And even if we were successful, we would still lose. We agree to outsource flying specifically because it lets the company shop that flying around to the lowest, hungriest bidder. If we were able to mandate ALPA exclusivity and then use that exclusivity to drive DCI costs higher and higher, that would mean we would need to sell even more scope to management in order to achieve a similar amount of cost savings.

DL pilots are the Alpha and the Omega for Delta pilot jobs. Period. We have to fix this on our own and take the flying back. ALPA, DPA or Underboob Inspector International Local 69, what needs to be happening today is lighting up the phone lines and filling up the email boxes of the LEC's like we are supposedly doing.

Our section 1 opener was so weak that it was weak even as a "conceptional" opener. Heck it could even be "interpreted" to mean a massive scope sale of ultra large RJ's. How about for every 10 fifty seaters parked, DL management can add 9 "hundred seaters" and we get to claim we are "improving the production balance"? That's worst case if we go by block hours, but even if we go by ASM's, try on: for every 10 fifty seaters parked, management can outsource 4.9 "hundred" seaters. See, that still complies with our weaksauce conceptual opener.

Even a conceptual opener should be better than this in the most important section in the opener (section 1).

I'm afraid that too many others will demand significant contractual improvements instead of the either sun setting the 70's or altogether re-capturing it. Complete restoration and bringing 50+ seaters to mainline will take more than one contract, that's reality. I would prioritize that with Scope being the most important item; thus this contract. Pay and work rules will naturally come when we do all of the flying, next contract. I'd guess that ALPA is going to try and stop the bleeding in regards to scope and try and maximize the rest of the contract.

Uh... no, but thank you for playing...

Interesting idea.. but really that is for the next contract since most of those contracts are around for another 12-15 years if I am not mistaken. Why waste capital on them now?




I like this idea... disguise our compensation from Wall Street...

So DL management is OK with paying us SWA W-2's for small narrowbody planes? And DL management is already on record saying widebodies could easily pay more than small narrowbodies.

SWA plus reasonable premiums to account for our significantly higher per pilot revenue and up from there for larger equipment. That would already comply with the company's stated objective to keep us in line with our competition.

I like the way you think. It's easy to point out the million reasons we shouldnt get a raise. I bit of defeatist way to go about things. Several here seem to do that alot (I suspect a few are management). You, on the other hand, give a very good reason why Delta could afford to give a healthy raise. I especially like your take the bull by the horns lead the way attitude.:)