He purchased his way out of recession, which works, however, there are trillions sitting on the sidelines because of it. Without a proper exit strategy, if that money finds its way into the economy, most of us on these boards will be unemployed. Inflation is an airline killer.

 

Please recheck your facts. The current rate is 1.90% and most likely down to 1.85%.

 

With the rebates the effective rate is more like 1.6%.

 

I'd gladly pay more for better representation. Focusing only on what you pay without accounting for results (ROI) is short sited. When you hire someone to represent you and they subsequently undermine your objectives, refusing to represent what you ask for (doing their own thing making deals with the opposition), that's a poor investment at any price. That's true of any vendor.

For an extreme example, if your life was on trial using a public defender (who spent little time preparing your case) at little to no cost, going up against Shapiro on the other side...would you be getting a bargain?

Of course price isn't everything. When I sit down with a professional service provider I'm considering hiring, the first thing I look at is their ability/willingness to publicly state the objective then create the process and support to obtain that objective.

 

C2012 will be 3.5 years in duration on the amendable date. How you can call that a "very short contract" is beyond me.

Do you really think this poor attempt at deflection actually works? "All the pilots who were 100% sure..." didn't comprise a single member of ALPA's E&FA. Therefore those pilots had no role in advising an acceptance of 3%, 3% during the airline's most wildly profitable years. That distinction of sage advice goes to the ALPA E&FA folks.

Now Sailingfun, care to actually answer the point of the topic, or do you need to study what the next deflection should be?

Carl

 

This I agree with. 4-5 is pretty normal. It was short (only extended us by 3 years beyond the previous amendable date) and came early, but not "very short". If it had been 2.5 years in duration (2 years beyond the previous amendable date) then maybe. I wish it were. Exchanging openers this past April might have worked out pretty good.

 

OK, so it's short, not very short, as Hillbilly says. The point is that it was signed on the heels of a quarter in which Delta lost money, and came with an amendable date that would have us open during a period of hopefully huge profits and substantial gains among our fellow carriers.

Both of those have certainly come true.

 

Except it wasn't a short duration contract. 3.5 years is not short.

We're exactly out of phase Karnak...that's the whole point. Our 3% this year is occurring during wildly high corporate profitability. All forecasts show our 3% next year will be occurring in a time of similar wildly high profitability. If our E&FA guys could actually forecast, these would be the times to be getting (and easily justifying) 10% gains. What are we getting during this time of extraordinary profitability? 3%, 3%.

Worse yet, some are forecasting a possible economic downturn in 2016 as part of normal business cyclicality. If that happens, we could be under pressure to minimize gains...after we squandered our huge profitability of 2014/2015 on raises of 3%, 3%. Preventing this is why we have Economic & Financial analysts at ALPA.

So now we're being called the "Angry Birds" inside the DALPA echo chamber? Fabulous.

But you again purposely miss the point. We "Angry Birds" aren't ALPA Economic & Financial Analysts. We're line pilots. We hire ALPA to do that for us. Our predictions of corporate profitability and ability to profit from those predictions do not change the fact that ALPA E&FA recommended 3%, 3% raises during times of enormous corporate profitability.

Look forward to your next deflection.

Carl

 

Unreal. Ignore the point of the post, and focus on that. Fine. I'll rephrase:

Care to actually answer that? It's clear tsquare won't.

Carl

 

No it's not Alan. Historically, our contracts have ranged from 3 to 4 years. I don't recall a single one that was 5, but there might have been one. 3.5 years is smack in the middle. Not "short" as claimed by sailingfud, and not "very short" as claimed by Karnak.

Hopefully? We shouldn't be forecasting based on hope. Our E&FA guys recommended accepting 3%, 3% during times of wildly high corporate profitability. Their job is to forecast. We're squandering wildly profitable years with 3%, 3% thanks to their forecasting.

Carl