Only a rocket surgeon could simplify this down to: "buy the jet and post a bid."

 

No man. F no man.

 

Could the targeted phone polling be used to get an LOU or 2? If a "majority" polled don't care much about a single specific concession, could that info be used to draft a badly wanted LOU?

 

Yep, I don't think they'd need anything from us to buy and fly them. They could completely staff them with a few months of hiring and fly them at current rates.

 

Absolutely. If nobody sees the results it could be used for anything.

Or nothing at all. I won't believe it's being used for anything until it's rumored on chit chat to being used for something.

I'm glad to hear the Embraer 190s are coming. I thought we were told by some on here that they weren't and that whole thing was dead.

 

But they don't want to fly them at current rates. Believe it or not, the company wants a higher pay rate on the E190/195. For a variety of reasons, apparently. That would take a SLOA.

I just hope the lame ducks don't feel the urge to "give up" anything for it.

 

As long as that rate matches B-717/DC-9 rates it might get my approval.

 

In my opinion it would be a major blunder to give the company any productivity gains right now - we need all of our leverage for section 6.

If the company wants 190s they can buy them - the concession stand is closed until further notice.

Besides - I was told that we would be parked looking at a PEB! And the 190 order would vanish so how can this be?

Scoop

 

It's not a issue of hiring pilots. The company has no organic 190 sims. It takes up to two years to order a sim and get it built, set up and certified. That assumes a purchase slot is available. If not it could be 3 or 4 years. Delta wanted a fleet of 70 to 90 of these aircraft. That size fleet would generate tremendous training churn with the current contract. It would push rented sim time rates way up and other then new hires no training is allowed in the time slot sold the most.
With the speed Delta wanted to bring this fleet onboard it may be that the sim time required with a large training churn beyond initial is simply not available at any price. If it is it will be very costly.
The company wants to minimize the churn by raising rates and making the new hire freeze longer.
Given the path we are now on allowing those changes in a side letter would be a mistake unless it included offsets that preserved any leverage this might give us.
A offset example would be we agree to those changes but the company has to raise all current rates 8.75% That means effectively no pay cut over the TA until 2017. I seriously doubt the company will go that route so it's a moot point.

 

Scoop, if your parked you never get to a PEB. Regardless I am sure you know a PEB is at least 5 years away.