We know for sure the UAL TA is 19% above our A 330 and 767-400 rates 1/1/16. We know we will never accepting penny less without touching profit sharing. Which is within a tiny percentage of United's.

Regardless of their vote totals.

Some people have said that our opener is pretty close to what our final should be and I have to agree. If United passes their TA they will have jumped us in pay and retained their profit sharing which basically mirrors ours with their threshold for 20% being at 2.7 billion instead of 2.5 billion in ours.

I know that we should not compare ourselves to the other employee groups, however if we do go to mediation and eventually arbitration it should be pretty easy to show that the other employee groups at Delta have leaped well ahead of their pre-giveback rates while we still lag significantly.

The FA's are the only group that have their rates readily available and they are about 18.6% above their pre-giveback rates (based on a 100 hour month). I would have to assume that the other employee groups current rates have jumped by about the same amount.

I have never heard anyone mention arbitration. I haven't given it much thought but I don't really seeing us going to arbitration.

Scoop

IMO 100% of the mediators focus will be on pilots and how we out distance our competitors by a huge margin.

Our contract must put distance our competitors by that same huge margin.

Why not? Our current contract does. We need to do substantially better than our current contract for a yes.

No, not yet. I have a CJO so I'm watching this closely. While I may not be able to vote on it, I will be working under it. I also completely agree with the post after this that DAL should just pony up and do the right thing.

Object Lesson:

Come back and re-read your post after 3 years on property and see if your perspective changes. To strengthen the lesson, consider listing your top 5 priorities for today's TA, and compare them to your top 5 priorities 3 years from now. Finally, imagine what your TA priorities will be in 10 years with (potentially) 15-20 more years remaining on property.

--break--

Here's a "thank you" to our negotiating team. They have a challenge meeting the demands of our motley pilot group!

Well that escalated quickly! I was just curious, geez guys, go easy on the new guy 🙄.

It's a rough crowd :). Don't worry, I've found the cockpit less contentious than the interwebs. I think most people are just frustrated at how the company is always talking about how much it cares about it's people, how much they love us and want the best for us, when in reality we're nothing more than a business expense. If they can be friendly without it costing a dime, they will often do so but if there is a cost associated then "doing the right thing" doesn't mean squat. If your hotel room means RA can't get that 69th set of platinum cuff links that match the dress his wife might wear to some future charity ball, well you're SOL unless we give something up for it in negotiations.

The lottery is so big right now, I just don't think that big.