My wife and I have 3rd row floor tickets in June for The Wall - Looking very much forward to Mr Waters' show. "Perfect" music.

And either did Boeing until the Navy put out these Specifications:

Passenger Rig - 122 Passengers.
Cargo rig - 7 standard Air Force Pallets.
Combination Rig - 68 Passenger aft and three Pallets forward.


So Boeing dutifully designed the C-40 to meet these specifications - and it did. So the Navy flies the Plane. Flies it in the Combi rig - drops off the passengers but the pallets stay on for the next leg. Then the load-masters cannot get the plane withing CG limits.

The Navy complains to Boeing. Boeing says "Whats the problem Navy?" Well we can't get the aircraft within limits in the combi rig with three pallets and no passengers. Boeing says - "Well thats not what you asked for - you asked for three pallets with 68 passengers." Well thats right up to 68 passengers and three pallets. No, not up to 68 passengers - 68 passengers. Well don't you think we might ever want to carry pallets without passengers in the combi rig? Well I guess, but you didn't ask for that.

And so it goes for about two years until they come up with brilliant idea of putting some type of temporary removable ballast in the planes at first. Well this solution would make Rube Goldberg proud so finally the Navy and Boeing say "The Hell with it - put 1500 lbs in the ass of all future C-40s. Don't know if the latest airframes have a better solution or not - I will check it out.

Kind of funny when you hear about all the trouble getting the 787 down to weight. Then again a single Navy air wing probably dumps more fuel then the C-40's use every year.

Scoop

There won't be any fragmentation targets to trigger because SWA is simply replacing a small fleet type like airlines do from time to time. That is not a free ticket to sport bid onto another airline's list.

Is Clapton going to be there too?

Wish you were here - Roger Waters & Eric Clapton - YouTube

Or David Gilmour

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j8mr...eature=related

AT guys are now SWA guys and no longer ALPA and have no fragmentation triggers under the SWA PWA.

This is true. There seems to be some miss understanding about fragmentation. Fragmentation is when you purchase a portion of a airlines operation. The airframes are almost irrelevant. What matters are the gates and route authorities and the other airline vacating those routes. If we purchase 717's from SW and in addition they give us additional gates in ATL for the aircraft along with vacating the routes then we should take the pilots with them. If not the pilots stay at SW and fly the replacement aircraft. Airlines replace aircraft all the time. Its not fragmentation.

We have bullet proof scope on this issue. No need for any changes and I contrary to the constant DPA proganda posts on the issue have never heard a single DALPA rep express any interest in even considering such a change. Not once on this forum has a pilot been able to name a single rep for Dalpa who would consider such a change yet the rumor gets posted here every 3 months like gospel. I would guess its been posted here at least a dozen times without a single fact to back up the posts.
The facts are the company has not approached the union outside the section 6 process for any changes in scope on 100 seat aircraft. I suspect the company will have something in their opener however it will be a throw out item.
You also have to understand that contrary to many posts the company would prefer to run aircraft at the mainline as the first choice. They will use that option every time they feel it can be done at a competitive costs level. Growing Delta mainline is in their best interest. Sustained growth is how you generate rising stock prices and in the case of Delta VP's how you generate wealth. Stock options for these guys are the key to real wealth generation. Growth also reduces your overall employee cost basis. This was one of the keys to SW for over 20 years. They maintained a large cost advantage over the competition and could maintain consistent sustained growth. They went all in so to speak in a attempt to put UAL out of business with their fuel hedges. Instead all their competition used the 1113 process to get their costs down and the SW huge cost advantage became a small cost advantage. Not enough to muscle into any market they wanted. Hence a shift from internal growth to mergers at SWA as a business plan.
If you can show the numbers to management that a route or equipment can be operated with a profit at the mainline they will do it. If you can't they are going to attempt to offer service on that route via alternate methods we all don't like. If you ever have a long productivity sit go over to the marketing department. Talk to those guys. You will learn a lot more about profit and lose on routes then you will get from the BS posted on this forum. You can even give them a specific route and they can show you what that route does every single day. This lead to some extreme embarrassment of a couple of pilots at in command when I attended it and they threw out their numbers on a couple of routes we had dropped. The actual numbers were produced and were quite different then the pilots who knew it all about costs and profits.

It sounds like the marketing folks will need to find a way to generate more revenue outside of specific routes ( bags, food, wifi, credit cards, etc). The funny thing is that despite management and ALPA continually saying that pilot costs have to be in line with the industry in order to be competitive, if pilot costs increased by 30% overnight, marketing would somehow find a way to generate profits to offset these costs.
It really sounds like you fully support outsourcing because it helps "keep us competitive."
Gee, if only marketing could embarrass more of us about our misconceptions of outsourcing, we would give up our scope stance and then management could really run the airline and make real profits. Do you now see why you are seen as attempting to manage expectations?

Sailing,

It is not that we have not been able to post names, I did not think it appropriate to post names. But, this can be put together with entirely public sources, so there is no need to "out" anyone.

Management has stated they want to be rid of the 50 seater for some time now. Any pilot from DCI has a vague idea of how the contracts work and know that Delta can not arbitrarily park unwanted regional jets. Delta has a long track record of trading the latest greatest RJ's in exchange for modifications of existing agreements. Management rapidly acquires every large RJ it can and has been maxed out on our two contract concessions, plus those allowed by Moak's deal for a quarter now. Anyone with a brain knows the pressure has to be building on Delta like the magma under Mt. Vesuvius.

Bastian's even making public statements to shareholders and pointing out D-ALPA's strategic planning guru, saying a deal on small jet flying will be announced soon.

It does not take a rocket surgeon to know that if management wants to exchange openers early ... there's only a couple of things they could want. Chief among those is, scope relief.

For the record the CRj 905 is a 100 seat airplane with a 90 seat fuselage barrel on it. The E175 is a 122 seat jet with a 9X seat barrel on it. Those are 100 seat airplanes, have better than mainline cost numbers. Arguing about whether they seat 76, 90, or 105 and seat pitch does not change the type of the aircraft. They are 100 seat types and more competitive than what we fly. That's why management somehow finds the money to pay for them.

Many Reps ran on the promise "not one more seat, or one more jet." If they violate that promise then is likely the DPA will successfully spin it into a "see, ALPA national forced us to give up more small jet flying" argument which validates their completely bogus position.

I'll look at the whole package ... but we need Delta seniority list pilots in the seats, whatever plan management's got to manage their RJ acquisition problems.

I never said I support outsourcing. What I am trying to explain is that many on here seem to think that if tomorrow we could own all flying at Delta airlines we would keep every route. Nothing could be further from the truth. We would eventually lose every route that could not be operated at a competitive rate. To say otherwise is to argue that the airline industry is not intensely cost competitive. Good luck with that discussion. I believe the company over stepped the scope issue with the EM170/175. They should be operated at the mainline. I have been consistent in that on every post I have made since joining this forum.