You're not just unsafe, you are dangerous!

 

If I could put a giant sign in every ACS breakroom: "REMEMBER, IT MIGHT BE NICE OUTSIDE, BUT IT'S ALWAYS 20 degrees WARMER IN THE CABIN."

 

Labbats,
Hope you can get on as soon as possible. IMHO the best thing Delta has done since BK days is to put a laser focus on completion and reliability and will go to great lengths to minimize delays and not cancel a single mainline flight when possible.

I agree that some travelers expectations are a little high..... One morning after a 1.5 hour delay for a flight to MIA, I had three different pax say they were going to miss their cruise ship boarding window that they had planned to walk off the plane and go straight to on an extremely cold winter's Saturday morning. No room for error. I felt bad and our company had let them down.... but there was nothing I could do, and I hate that feeling.

The other day at the airport I saw a late 50's couple, woman crying, both on cell phones with their ALG receipt from their printer in their hand frantically trying to call someone at ALG due to a recently canxed flight. I couldn't even make out the reason they were both upset, but it didn't really matter. They asked me as I walked by (in different company uniform) if I knew of any way to help get a hold of ALG. I walked them over to the airport info guy who was at his desk about 25' away and I said do you have any special number or way to talk to someone? Apparently, the ALG ticket desk had shut down and vacated for the day and the couple felt abandoned. He looked at all of us and said, "no, and daily I have crying disappointed passengers here that ALG has left stranded".
Of course he was probably exaggerating to make the people feel better, and I had to leave to catch my JS, so I have no idea what happened in the end, but that kind of unreliability and reputation will catch up to a travel company eventually if it is widespread enough.

 

 

Fixed it for ya.

 

"Back in the day", when Delta started up Delta Express (anyone remember that?) and the pilots were on a lower pay scale, there were second officers who had NEVER flown either captain, or copilot on a Delta jet who up-graded directly to captain on the express operation.

Many wise people predicted dired consequences, but everyone did just fine. Anyone Delta hires has the experience and ability to be trained to fly captain day one.

Never underestimate pilots' survival instincts....

 

It was very wise what Dal did with express. That was the most standardized operation in the airline. In fact JG was a check airman at express. And, another guy in the news this week, was the fleet Capt, CF. You guys know me by now, and I call a spade a spade. I like both of those guys. They are genuine, good, sharp, nice guys, they just took a different route than the rest of us. They have a role to play.

Carry express forward. The airline is standardized, maybe excessively. Standardization is good. Try to fly the same flight over and over every flight and you get pretty darn good at doing your job.

All the new-hire captains in NYC were 88 FOs in NYC. I'm pretty sure they got this.

 

It's nice to see delta pilots from both seats throughout the seniority list exuding confidence for the new 88 captains.

That's unity and the rest of us should take note.

 

Actually, I had 4700 hours or so when I got hired at Delta. 3K was airline flying, the rest was "other" flying. I also only had a 2.02 GPA. Of course, that was back in 2001.

 

I was identical in flying times for a 2007 hire. 2000 of that airline flying was CRJ captain. 2.7 GPA, though.