You do need less coverage if you can use each pilot more. The explanation at the roadshow was that this is how we paid for the increase in reserve guarantee.

However, the staffing formula, which is applied each month, considers the total amount of reserve flying in a position. To the extent that reserve pilots were averaging less than 60 hours per month, the staffing formula was requiring incrementally fewer pilots in each succeeding month. if that average increases, the required pilots going forward also increases.

We certainly are bumping up against the staffing formula during the summer on a number of fleets. Look at the Bid Monitor report.

I heard that 1% was $20M before C2012. If we went up a total of about 20%, then at most it would have gone up to $22M, right?

He is Mike Hanson's mouthpiece.

Managemnet wants CDOs bad. They will push hard in C2015.

Alan

I agree. This leaves $500 million for historic improvements in the othee sections.

Jerry

I completed the survey. I was disturbed by the questions about stock and stock options.

If you were on the property prior to 2000, you have already had your fill of stock options. Put it in my paycheck. I'm still papering the wall with stock options from a bankrupt company.

I feel the same way about profit sharing. No need to negotiate any changes to profit sharing. It's no risk to the Company. It's all risk to the employee. The Company only pays out if there is a profit. The employee doesn't get diddly squat if there isn't a profit.

I'm not quite sure where all the angst is with the profit sharing discussion. Some of you think you are important to the Company. You are not. You are a cost, an employee number. Profit sharing does not change how I safely conduct my business day. It shouldn't change how you conduct business either. I rarely agree with Sailingfun on anything. But, I have to concede his arguments about profit sharing.

Let's concentrate on better work rules, better insurance, better retirement, and working less. Profit sharing just isn't that important.

So...DALPA had to give up something to get rid of something the company didn't even want to begin with.

Bravo, DALPA.

Actually, there really isn't flying that is being shifted to those remaining.

First, if you believe that the 125 guys flew 1,000 hours per year, shifting their time to the rest of the pilot group equates to about 45 minutes per month. But that is not what is happening.

In actuality, what was occurring was that pilots were there flying full schedules for 3 months and then sitting around for 9 months collecting reserve guarantee as excess. That is where the savings were.

As we have grown flying time, we went from a huge pilot surplus to a measurable pilot shortage. That is what is causing people to feel more flying over this summer. It has nothing to do with work rule changes, it has to do with the company getting behind on hiring (they should have started months earlier) and now the growth in mainline is outpacing their ability to catch up during the summer. This would have occurred with or without the 125 pilot job efficiencies.

If you recall, about 18 months ago, guys were posting their 12 month lookbacks for block hours and they were showing 150-200 hours for the YEAR. Certainly no one thought that would last forever. The growth at mainline just accelerated that day of reckoning.

The changes made to improve efficiency had very little to do with the amount of flying in peak periods. The efficiency was to level load out reserve requirements so you were not fat 9 months a year just to have enough guys to fly the summer. Right now, the company has been in damage control to try to correct their tardiness in hiring. It's a little like Lucy working at the chocolate factory. As soon as she catches up on one part of the line the other is backed up.

Just to put the work rule changes in perspective. The current AE has 390 job openings and comes about 6 weeks after the last AE. That means a loss of 125 jobs delayed an upgrade by about 3 weeks. That is the lasting effect. One way or another, the staffing excess would have been sorted out. It just comes at the same time as block hours are growing quickly and those two effects are what you are feeling this summer.

Ummmmmm care to 'splain this? ^^^^ If you have fewer reserves, the ones you have, will HAVE to work more. The physics of what you state in these two sentences won't work. Unless the unwritten variable is that there is less flight time to go around.... then you would be correct.

Yes, and I used Alfa's incessant touting of how much we've "gained" to put it into perspective. I wasn't countering a cost neutral versus not cost neutral argument. I was adding perspective to Alfa's "data." Sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, but it is what it is.

I know it's hard, Alan, but if you really try you might could keep up.(Was that as condescending to you as you were to me? ;))

Who's mouthpiece are you?