Great post VPR.

My question from now is as you stated, how come there are no synergies in going down to one regional fleet and bringing it back inside mainline? Ghosts of Comair 2001 still?

 

First of all, not our problem. Seriously, it isn't. We could get all the RJ scope back tomorrow and this "me too" bolshevism crap gets sent straight to Leningrad because its not our problem. Let the other work groups negotiate and pay for their own scope. The company could easily just off list it (or just threaten to) for them for the same price...only at a "new" subsidiary with a vert tasty longevity reset, which you know they love to do, and when the labor groups come squealing for another pilot "me too" the company should tell them the same thing they tell us..."what are you willing to give up to pay for it" and oh by the way, it'll be done on a B scale, so are y'all cool with that?

I bet the other work groups will drop it like a bad transmission because as much as we don't "get" the whole scope concept at times, we get it better than any other group...so much so that we've been carrying their water for decades. They are not about to unionize over something they don't have or care to get in the first place but if they want to, let them "pay for it" too. I bet they drop it instantly. Anyway, in the very unlikely event the other work groups want to insource all these cheaper paying, less desireable jobs, they can start negotiating with the company. Union or non union, it's going to be a B scale that provides significant savings for the company...or...the savings will have to be amortized over the rest of the work group to pay for it. Either way there will be significant savings over "mainline book". There is no way the other work groups, who totally and completely lack the interest and foresight to even know what scope is, much less care enough to pay for it, will end up getting everything we get in this area for free. It'll be pay to play and I bet they don't even ante up at the table.

Right, like Pinnacle?

I think the days are very numbered where companies can use fake phony accounting trickery to "hide" debt from the ones it matters most...the shareholders. While it may always be legal, if debt is a big concern, they will start figuring out the paper lies and sooner or later some analysts will start costing the true debt in.

However, if that really was the deal killer, there are many other tricks that can and would be used, such as creative lease arrangements with financial institutions, which create the exact same paper arrangement for the planes that the fake airline ACMI's do. There is nothing they proivide that a bank/leasing company can't do. Reference the 737-900 orders and how they didn't just add 3-4 billion in debt to our bottom line but were financially finagled in such a way to instantly be "cash flow positive" without the debt hitting our bottom lines. If we can get the credit to sign the contracts and sublet the jets to the fake airlines, we can get the credit to link the leases/payments to a bank just as easilly. The company that launders the leases for us does not have to be a fake airline to hide the debt from the see no evil investment community.

Just did. So when's the AE?

Disagree. They (not all but easilly most) outsource because they can and for no other reason. It is, literally, a religion to them. They fantasize about shareholder conference calls and board meetings for the fake Delta Ticket Seller where they make nothing, produce nothing and contribute nothing yet collect massive bonuses proportionate to the size of the revenue laundered through their paper shell inventions. WWCEWD? Not the guy that sits at his desk, but him. What would he do? Would he be interested in outsourcing the entire airline (which they would do in a NY slot swap second if we let them) or actually running an airline with people and airplanes and customers that come to us to be flown in our airplanes by our people instead of Skyteam operated by Delta operated by Delta Connection operated by republic operated by Shuttle America on the separate certificate trick for your travelling enjoyment?

 

Can anyone share their experience of returning to Delta after a long away period.
I was a NWA pilot in 2001, then furloughed for 6 years and mil leave for the last 5 years. I'll be returning in the late fall and would appreciate any information you can share.

Thanks,

RetiredFTS

 

Call DALPA. They've got the gouge and will send you to the right people.

 

Can't really blame him. For the really junior guys, I have to advise them to look at all their options. This certainly isn't the career I expected. FDX would be a no brainer.

But, you won't know for sure until you see your 65th birthday. None of us will.

 

No.

The history of this dates back to the beginning of aviation. E L Cord, the founder of American Airlines was first and foremost the owner of competing conglomerates.

Errett Lobban Cord - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He, and other airline progenitors would commonly replace their pilots, getting rid of those who demanded more pay to compensate for greater risks, or experience (IE seniority). When pilots refused to fly in hazardous conditions and risk others' lives, those pilots would be fired and replaced with new, junior pilots.

Eventually the pilots followed the labor movement and unionized. In some cases they saw pay raises of 500% over time.

After deregulation there was a massive and permanent decline in revenues that airlines receive for their product. Today we are only beginning to see the stabilization of a decline which has been ongoing since 1978. Airlines have floundered in a vicious economic cycle (which appears to have always been the case to folks in our generation, but it wasn't). Pay was wildly out of step with revenues and concessionary contracts are always a hard sell.

The easy solution was a "B scale." Most everyone knows what that is, but for the uninitiated, "B Scale" was much lower pay for new hires who performed the same work, on the same airplanes. It was unfair, since those hired earlier got paid much more.

As more and more pilots who had experienced "B Scale" rose in the ranks of the airlines, they gained political power within ALPA and demanded that the unfair "B Scale" be ended. Our current generation of ALPA leadership well remembers "B Scale" and how it negatively effected their careers.

I think the first move to outsource B Scale flying was at Eastern Airlines under Babbit (but I'm not sure). Babbit is about the only former ALPA leader who has talked openly about what he considers to have been a mistake to move B Scale (small aircraft) flying off the seniority list.

By the time Charles Giambusso (former Delta MEC Chair) came along, every major airline had engaged in outsourcing small aircraft flying. US Air probably had the most, on a percentage basis, when the question of Comair came along. Small aircraft flying was seen as a problem, a stepping stone, a pariah, to mainline lists. Worse, having used outsourcing as a method to eliminate hated B Scale, small aircraft flying on the list was perceived as a threat. Just as the B Scale pilots had wrestled control away from their oppressors, the B Scale guys feared the next generation would take control from them and lavish negotiating capital on increasing pay on smaller aircraft AT THE SENIOR PILOTS EXPENSE!

While this happened at every major airline, the effect was particularly acute at Delta, where you had excellent labor relations with management and a lot of military pilots who had done pretty well working for Delta. For the most part, the Delta pilots saw less need for the sort of "unity" used to fight management compared to pilots who had come to age in EL Cord's time. The Delta MEC and Delta pilots saw nothing to gain and much to lose by pursuing unity with pilots who performed their outsourced flying. Delta management had always been benevolent and the concepts of "unity" which were a religion to some within our union were considered something of a quaint notion at Delta, if the concept of "unity" as a way to fight management like EL Cord's was understood at all.

Today we are at a crossroads. The experienced hands say "trust us, Delta management has our best interests at heart." The junior pilots see nearly half the airline outsourced in a decade and are fearful of just the sort of alter ego replacement EL Cord (and early airline managers) did as a matter of routine.

It is my opinion airline management has not changed. Delta at one time was a very unique Company that has adapted and changed becoming like its competitors and now leading them. There is no doubt Richard Anderson has been a good steward of the corporate entity. However, any quaint notion that Delta network management approaches their job with warm and fuzzy feeling about Delta employees is ridiculous. These are numbers men and they approach your career with the certainty and coldness that are the result of purely mathematical calculation. In other words, EL Cord's sensibilities tied to a lightning fast computer and only filtered by a sense of political correctness and legal restraint.

We need a return to our roots, unity. Nothing has changed in aviation. Just as in Cord's day without unity we will be replaced by junior pilots willing to perform our work for less, willing to sacrifice working conditions and willing to sacrifice safety.

I don't see this as a matter of economics. It is a matter of survival. Logically it follows that if ALPA fails to unify their pilots, ALPA itself will be the first to fail. By the time the DPA supporters figure out their plan is ineffective all will already be lost. The answer to preserve our union, our careers, our pay and "Delta Air Lines" as we know it is unity ... we have to get to Delta pilots performing Delta flying.

 

I think the Delta pilots made some critical mistakes along the way, but you're probably drifting into some serious revisionism here. My impression is that we tried to reach out to the regional groups, mostly CMR/ASA at the time, and got the finger. This was just before my time... so I can't completely comment on the Delta pilots at the time, anymore than you can, but I don't think you can look at this without factoring in the RJDC and people like Lawson.

You must be completely shielded from senior pilots. I've NEVER heard anyone not in management suggest Delta management has our best interest at heart. I think this kind of talk died in 1996, if there was any left after the early nineties. Also, on the subject of outsourcing... I'm not very senior (hired late in the 1996-2001 push), and I found many senior pilots were not properly concerned about RJ's initially. But today? On the 7ER, the Captain that isn't aware of the dangers of outsourcing is probably in a 1% "club".

Amen to that.

 

Great. Actually, outstanding!

 

Sink,

Actually, I am fighting revisionism by telling it as it was.

The RJDC and Lawson's missives were reactions to the 2000 ALPA Board of Directors meeting where the ASA / Comair PID was denied. The reaction came after the action. Obviously, if the ASA & Comair guys had been merged all of that would be Delta's flying and they would be Delta pilots. There would have been no RJDC, or Lawson.

None the less, pilots today don't understand why our MEC is against recapture. My post is intended to explain why and explain that there is a logical basis for their actions. They wanted to get rid of B Scale, which is laudable.

 

Bar,

Sorry, I was editing as you were answering.

My understanding of that situation is that we met, and offered to work an arrangement, along the lines of a staple, but ASA/CMR wanted to force a ...PID (not sure what that stands for, but to force a declaration of a merger), to trigger the merger policy.

Is this not correct?

There is of course no way that would have been acceptable to the Delta pilots, just as we couldn't agree today, to any combination without a pre-negotiated list. Which would have to be essentially a staple.

I'm not sure they're "against recapture", but I see your rationale, even if I disagree about the RJDC issue. There was also a desire in C2K to get rid of Express. Many pilots referred to Express as a cancer. If only we could have that kind of cancer again! I would be open to creating an operation that brings RJ's in-house, whether it's labelled as "cancer", or "B-Scale", if the pilots were on the list, and our contract. It's a lot better to have tailored work-rules and payrates for smaller jets, than to have them outsourced.

Be my guest for the last word, I have to wrap-up.

Regards,

Sink r8