All that says to me is that the MEC wants to know how the pilot group feels about them. I see a number of issues mentioned in the survey that can be considered concessionary, and I see their presence as our opportunity to make it loud and clear what we think.

We complained earlier this year that CDOs were in the 117 TA and no one asked us how we felt about them. Now we're going to complain because they're asking us?

 

Me too....

 

I'm sure they are. Too bad you only release the ones you want to release.

I do understand that, but why then did you release the $1.012 billion figure that you posted below? In law, we call that "opening the door" and if this was court I could compel you to release the costing sheets that you helped develop. But this isn't court and you're allowed to release only the numbers you want. If you're trying to show honesty and transparency, this is not the way to do so.

Then show us.

Carl

 

I disagree. I believe that profit sharing gives us an opportunity to earn more during good years than we could achieve with hard pay rates, albeit at the risk of earning less during bad times. The overall results, if done properly, would reward us for that risk just as investing in the stock market can provide higher returns than CDs.

Stock and stock options would be OK with me provided that they could be immediately exercised or sold and that the strike price were favorable in that regard. IOW, more like what we received in the JCBA and nothing like what we got from POS96.

 

C2012 did not require more pilots, it required less by about 125. The drop in pilots above required also had nothing to do with FAR 117, that was staffing neutral for us. Required staffing will rise from the LOA in November due to the 5:15 ADG but that is not reflected yet on these graphs.

The drop in pilots above required is from pilots retiring and then the increase in block hours created from the mainline expansion. Mainline growth is reflected here:

 

Right. That's what I said -- there will be fewer reserve pilots. That is good for those who are no longer forced to reserve in that they get a line, and it is bad for those remaining on reserve as they will each work more.

 

FWIW, that's what I got out of what you said too, Alan. I don't understand T's confusion.

 

It doesn't make me uncomfortable at all, and I fully agree with you. My only point was that, as a retort or response to Alfa's post, it was irrelevant to the point he was trying to make.

Yes, indeed. Nicely done.

 

Well you keep dancing around issues, never sticking to one argument. C2012 was NOT cost neutral for Delta pilots, it increased our compensation by $1 billion. Your previous argument was that it was cost neutral for Delta pilots and that is wrong and it is apparent that you are abandoning that argument at least until you dredge it up again.

I really don't care how Delta finds the money to pay for that or how they characterize that to their shareholders. They shifted the money from other payments to us and that makes you upset how?

If Delta can raise ticket fees by $100 a passenger and then give half of that to me for a gigantic raise, I don't really care that they make positive gains on the deal. I just want more money, the source is immaterial to me.

 

The problem isn't that they're asking us, but it's a combination of putting a concessionary item on the table AND the manner in which they're asking us to consider it. We're not given cleanopportunities to specify whether or not we want to go down a specific path. We're being asked:

Do you want to go down this path if other airlines are doing it?
Do you want to go down this path if we can make improvement A?
Do you want to go down the path if we can make improvement B?
Do you not want to go down this path?

You might get 65% of people to answering "no" to a straight-up Yes/No on CDO's, but you might bet 35% yes votes to line up with 8% that "A" is a good mitigating strategy, 8% that think "B" is a good mitigating strategy, and bingo, you have 51% saying they want CDO's with some improvement.

This is exactly the way Prater's guys pulled off the claim of support for Age 65.

This is a very poor survey, IMO. I'm a supporter of our union, but this doesn't meet standards of intellectual honesty. It smells of a few guys wanting OOBS and trying to push them through, a few others wanting CDO's, and whatever other pet items people fought over.

I expected much better.