Schwanker

You don't want to show your hand. After all, if you share your opener with the pilot group, management might find out

Timbo

I'm thinking Management just created a whole bunch of negotiating leverage with the early 747 parking announcement.

"If you guys want to see new new wide body replacement jets, you'll have to give us, X, Y and Z, or we just won't be able to afford it."

X=Profit sharing
Y=Pay Banding
Z=Longer freezes

NERD

And the usual subject matter experts will be selling this as a win. Remember that we are not so much a union, but more like partners with delta. Must do what makes the enterprise more money.

NWA320pilot

Guess we will be a narrow body airline then

Starcheck102

I think that's a stretch, at best.

RA has stated publicly on many occasions that he hates four-engine gas guzzlers. Everyone knows that the 747s are going away, the only question was "when," and apparently it's sooner than Crew Scheduling was able to reckon. The FLTOPS comms reveal something about corporate structure. Or lack of it. They probably spent all day Monday re-running the bid after the brass finally let them in on the fact that eight 747A awards were no longer valid. FLTOPS is still on the clothesline.

Sloppy. Disorganized.

The only people talking about pay banding and freezes are in C20. We need pay solutions that reflect the new reality that pensions are gone, so the importance of FAE is zero, and pilots need to have more money earlier in their careers for retirement investments. We need to front-load our compensation.

Profit sharing is always for sale, but bring your checkbook.

Anyone daft enough to accept the concept that the limiting factor on fleet choices was pilot pay should probably check his plumbing for lead pipes. A deal is a deal, but the answer to every ultimatum is "no."

gloopy

I agree with that in general. One of the best single things we and other airlines can do is to continue to phase out the cancer we colloquially accept as "first year pay". First year pay should be a percent or two below second year pay, and second year pay should be a percent or two below third year pay.

This gives a one time "disproportionate raise" to first and second year pilots, but removes a huge amount of leverage from airline managements going forward. Our current "pay your dues, son!" approach only weakens us in the long run. We also need to fight to keep max scale at 12 years and vigorously avoid pro-management schemes to have higher scales.

We (all) also need to work towards preferential hiring for distressed legacy pilots. The next time a large pilot group is faced with a "vote concession or else" they will face considerably less pressure to acquiesce under duress knowing they can always "start over" at 6 figures.

That is only part of the solution of course. We also need to stop the cancer of living paycheck to paycheck at 150-250K for any reason. That weakens us severely and heavily predjudices us to settle for less to keep what we have.

All of those things will require a significant philosophical shift across airlines over time and won't happen overnight. But we have to start somewhere.

NERD

He's also stated that he doesn't like 777s and 787s. It's funny how AA, Ual and all of our JV/code shares love these aircraft. I know, I know. RA is the smartest CEO ever and the rest will regret their choices and sell them to us for pennies on the dollar.

sailingfun

I never heard him say he did not like 777's. What he did say was ours had a very inefficient layout and seat count. That's been fixed.

gloopy

True but I don't think anyone contests that the 777's we really want are dramatically overpriced with the insane fake royal emerati bubble. Why would Boeing bother dealing with dying small fries when they can get in bed with the new world airline young money crowd for great success?

Ooooo, an RFP for a couple dozen widebodies? That's adorable. Sure, here's our offer. You can meet us in Dubai to sign the papers if you have the cash, and we'll totally check our voicemails every few weeks for your response. Meanwhile we've got record orders to announce every day that dwarf anything you can ever come up with.

We are trash to Boeing. They will sell US airlines widebody planes at fake bubble market prices if we buy them, but they don't care about any of us. They have already picked a side and it ain't us.

tsquare

What I have heard him say is that "the 777 doesn't know where it wants to go". It has been reconfigured several times during his tenure, and still doesn't seem to quite do what he would like. I'm not saying that he doesn't like the airplane, just that his rhetoric doesn't fill me with ANY confidence that there will be any more in our future. Frankly, I think super premium flying is extremely limited in our kind of network. If you are a jihadi airline that is tying mega cities only, equipment like the 380s make sense. Again, there is a balance that has to be struck, and a ton of super premium airframes don't make sense for us... I think we better accept the idea that the majority of DAL pilot careers will be at 330 and below flying. Of course nothing has really changed now has it?