I hope this question makes sense:

The Negotiators Notepad says that this 650,000 block hour floor is the "level of flying to which Delta grew after Alitalia joined the JV."

Is that level:

A.) Higher than what we are flying now,

B.) Equal to what we are flying now, or

c.) Lower than what we are flying now?


What level EASK's were we flying at that point of measurement?

What is our level of EASK's now?

50% is the current baseline, with a 1.5% buffer

47.5% would be the new baseline, but company only has to maintain a 2 year average of 46.5%.

Of course it makes sense. The question is, why doesn't the NN already include this info? Take note of every question that isn't answered in the original NN, and I think you'll find those answers almost always weaken the argument for TA passage. Sell job feels like it has begun.

Critical thinking!? Critical Theory??I always thought you were the local graduate of The Frankfurt School! ............

Bucking Bar, make sense of this for me. If we are above 650k for the year, the company flies 46.5% minimum of the AF JV EASKs. If we are below 650k, the company flies 48.5% minimum of the AF JV EASKs.

True or False?

The job protection in the above 650K is a global job protection, and the job protection in the below 650k is a Transatlantic job protection.

True or False?

Is this a good protection for Delta pilots and better than what we have now?

I would prefer the NC speak for themselves and I'm trying to resist doing to them what they did to me last year. I want them to have the first and last word.

The proposed JV scope change looks similar in some unfavorable ways to the Virgin Australia deal (signed by Heiko & co.). That VAus deal was sold as protecting the minimum floor of the US-Aus theater flying for DL. In reality, it allows VAus to fly more than double DL's frequency on those routes.

Now we're seeing the 650,000 international block hour floor "protection" as a remedy for allowing company's failure to meet 48.5% eask in the TAJV. My suspicion is that 650,000 block hours would fall below the new 46.5% eask floor also contained in the AIP. I also suspect that we are above 650,000 block hours currently. Factor all of that in (again, a couple of assumptions made) and the 650,000 block hour floor allows the company to go below the 46.5% eask TAJV while keeping the company in compliance with the PWA. Seems like a bait and switch. I hope DALPA produces some #s to prove me wrong.

Finally, there is no mention of enforcement mechanisms. So the ultimate failure is that the company will likely continue violating whatever "floors" are established without any meaningful recourse for the pilot group.

If you are for or against, all of us need to remember that the company has a proven track record of not complying with the agreed upon language of the contract. That they have worked to circumvent the pilot group in bringing themselves into "compliance". They praise us in public, hold us to conduct ourselves at the highest standards and will discipline us or worse at the drop of a hat. The double talk and disrespect has to end. In the nine years I've been here, the WB flying has continued to be reduced. It must end now, no more gives! Bring our flying back and make sure if it is violated the company is penalized appropriately that they don't do it again. Enough is enough.

Agreed.



.

.
.

Disclaimer up front: I envy the WB fleet of our bros and sis's at UAL and AAL.

But mind if I ask a devil's advocate question on scope for all of us? Why should we force our management team to fly more WB aircraft if that's not profitable on a given route based on their access to information that you and I do not have? If you and I have more long-term pay stability (hopefully) than our brethren at UAL and AAL because we are managed differently, is that not a good thing?

Things I think I understand:

1. The more WB, the better the opportunities for progression (whether you want to stay NB and get seniority, or jump to WB for other reasons)

2. WB flying is a source of pride

3. The company doesn't really care about us, they just want us to work harder and be away from our families more

How about this: what if our contract required the company to boost our profit sharing % (by a significant number)if they were out of compliance? Is that a good idea, or even possible?

-Willie

Let me ask you this:

Why should we force the company to fly 717s to certain locations when a 96 seat RJ flown by a lower-paid pilot would be smarter from a business standpoint?

It will also increase profits if we all take a pay cut.

I know this sounds flippant, but I'm not trying to be rude to you. I get your line of reasoning. Here is the deal. The company can reduce as much flying as they want to any theater they want if they are not in a JV. But because we are in a JV, where as pilots we have agreed to share some flying out of our scope because we set limits to what can be flown and how much and by whom, the company has limits on the flying. This protects us from having all of our international flying outsourced to a lower bidder.

If the flying is not profitable, it should not be hard to convince the JV partners from reducing their flying. Or, the company can end the JV. There is nothing preventing the company from purchasing more planes and meeting their JV obligations (CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS TO US) and benefiting from the profitable flying in other theaters.

The 650,000 hours is a baseline of hours that matches our flying a few years ago. Since then, we have added thousands of pilots to our company. That means, if we stick to the same number of hours of international WB flying, we are actually shrinking our WB flying almost every day a new class starts. Has our NB flying grown?

SCOPE is important. The company entered into an agreement with us. We have every right to demand it live up to its end of the deal. If we desire to let the company out of that deal, I will not be agreeing to it for an industry-standard pay rate. The company can unwind the JV to free up its international options or it can adhere to its commitments to us.

These are our jobs, upgrades, pay raises, QOL being given away out from under us.

We have recorded all of these outstanding questions all of you have posed. We expect to be hearing more from the NC and SME's shortly with amplifying information on this.

The MEC is meeting in DC currently as many of you know. As the meeting wraps up we expect more information about critical sections to be made available to the pilots. As soon as we have that information we will forward it on.

Thank you.

Delta MEC Communications Committee Volunteers

Jobs are lost and gained based on economics. If the company can make money, they'll put a plane up.

Currently, I don't think anything changes if the TA is ratified. We would excuse an existing amount of non-compliance.

The reason you have these contracts is to protect against large swings, upside or downside. Our partners generally have larger aircraft. If we grow, you want your protection in EASK's (seats): they add a 380, we add 2 767's. If the economy tanks, and the JV pulls flying back, you want it pulled in some fair proportion, but not EASK's (you don't want to dump 2 767's for a AF A380).

At first glance, we have decent protections up/down traded for being slightly lower than our allotment now. We're not coughing up jobs from here, but we could have been higher, in theory. Or, to be in compliance, we could have leaned on our partners to cut more of their jobs/flights, and been in compliance.

If you are forecasting tremendous growth on the Atlantic, we're saying we'll capture a little less (but still add pilots). If you're forecasting mediocre-to-down on the Atlantic, the TA adds a block-hour floor. That's about it.

Sounds reasonable to me not sure why this is such a sticking point.

If that were the case we could (and should!) "sell" them our entire wide body scope language. All of it. Just get rid of it, and the B-School geniuses will rock out with their profits out and we will all be lifted by the rising tide. Right?

No.

They have shown an incredibly hostile propensity to use foreign metal by every plane, crew and seat they possibly can...and then they exceeded that...and merely threw some money at us when they violated it for YEARS. Every agreement gives us less than half. Why? Why does every single JV give us less than half or whatever metric they are forced to measure it by? Why can't we at least do half, or a couple percent more? Why do we always have to do less than half? Why? Always.

No one thinks they can force the company to fly wide bodies into losing routes just to give us jobs, etc. They are free to pull down whatever makes sense for them to pull down. The point of our scope is to insure that we get our fair share instead of some foreign pilot group. DL is the dominant network/revenue generator/ticket seller in pretty much all of these JV's. Yet our managers would like more and more and even more of the profitable lift that they identify and go after to be flown with foreign labor.

Our scope is the ONLY thing stopping that. DAL wouldn't exist today without DALPA PWA/CBA pilot scope. Our Section 1 is the only reason DAL as we know it currently exists. Otherwise it would be a virtual network clearing house broker.

I have no idea how you went from what I said in my post, to what you say in your post, Gloopy.

But to address yours: of course, the deal needs to be fair. 50/50 sounds fair for one side of the Atlantic against the other. EASK's is fair too. It's awesome on the upside, terrible on the downside. So we traded compliance for a combined % and block hour floor, with slightly lower %. If you think we're facing a downturn (I tend to), it's something to weigh, but nothing to have a coronary over.

Right now, I tend to view Scope as neutral in this TA, but I reserve judgment. Ironically, history might tell us the mistake was not improving the ratios on the NB side. We have protections on the JV, and globally, but are we exposed on the NB end?

I don't think its 100% safe to completely rely on either EASK's or Block Hours. There are scenarios where we could get screwed with either, even if we did get half. We need both in a way that fairly captures our share.

But at least we should get half. And last I checked, half is half, not some BS "flex" number, the bottom of which becomes the new ceiling in perpetuity.

I like the concept of ESK and BH, JV and global, in theory. The real question is are the percentages enough? I don't think they are. The BH floor is (correct me if I'm wrong) significantly less than we're currently doing, and we're also essentially forgiving their current refusal to honor our half of the EASK's even if you define half as the lower limit of the fake "flex" amount.

All of that is a loss and there's really no other way to spin it. It doesn't appear to be a huge loss, but why are we losing anything in the most unreal negotiating environment and relative industry economic times in the history of the world?

That said, I really do like the 3 year measure/1 year cure being replaced by a hard 2 year period. I suppose in theory that might partially make up for it, because you can't just look at the percentages in current book without also realizing that there is no floor for 3 years balanced only by finally giving us our agreed upon share for one year, and then down again for 3. That is insane and we shouldn't use any lawyer who green lighted that language ever again. So that part is definitely an improvement.

Stop giving them viable jets, the ratios won't matter. You view not giving away more 76 seat rj's as a mistake???

The reason the company wants lower limits on JV production balance is because that is where they intend to go...lower, not higher. Think about that. And when it comes to JVs in our contract, past performance is a very good indicator of future returns. Managment WILL go below whatever floor is established without penalty and we're proposing that we let them do it by writing the language into the contract. Bad precedent for future contracts everywhere.

I do.

I don't.

Well, if they keep the 50-seaters around, the net size of DCI doesn't shrink, and we increase above our ratios without downside protection, it will prove to be a mistake, sure.

The whole premise for not trading a large number of 50-seaters for a much smaller number if 76-seaters (subject to seat remival in case if furlough) was that the 50-seaters were going away anyway, and the company wants to order 76-seaters badly enough to have us flying them. Let's see if one or both things happen before we log this as a win.

Why are they adding flights to Europe next year? They do want flexibility in case of things like a economic collapse in Europe, a war in the Ukraine, revolution in Egypt etc...

Keep in mind they don't have to park ALL the 50's to make this a win for us. They can keep up to 76 50 seaters long term and it's a wash in seats. Anything less and its a win. Not only that, but even if they do that, 50's are more expensive seats, require more pilots (that they're going to be pressed to keep finding) and are far worse operationally (constantly weight and balance restricted and an inferior product) so the effective break even number is likely north of 76. I think keeping RJ scope where it is currently is a better move.

Because we still live under C2012. If we pass this AIP into a TA, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the new Europe flying disappears.

Those events you mention affect all JV partners. So why are we always the ones to volunteer to take it in the shorts?

Black swans...black swans everywhere. Way to plant the fear seed. Classic Moak tactic.

Not as classic as ad hominem attacks.

Got something to refute his point about flights being added?

He wasn't saying those things are coming true, but now that you mention it... I just watched the presidential debate. The swans are blacker than normal, these days. I'll take downside insurance. That is to say I'll evaluate it carefully. I'm still not sure how the floor works, considering it's global, but seems to be triggered by the TAJV.

All of those events have already happened, so you're right, he wasn't saying those things are coming true. So I guess our JV partners must be immune to those kind of things happening in their back yard because they continue to fly more than 50% of the JV flying. Must be some awesome management at those airlines.

Not only that, but when we pull down longer direct flights and instead just shuttle pax to their hubs in shorter block hour flights, we only share the shorter block hours. That's like double dipping in reverse.

Has anyone answered whether we are above or below 650000 hrs now and by how much?

Doesn't seem like they're immune to me. I own a little AF/KLM stock, and they haven't done very well. I don't know whether we pulled back, or simply failed to grow into our targets, but everything I read about the Atlantic market says it's soft, so I think it was problematic to add much capacity.

Wat in Ukraine, economic collapse in Europe, revolution in Egypt... are all plays in which we might have seen but the first act. I wouldn't presume to predict the future on any of these points.

That's not the point though. Whatever we do WRT the JV, we should get our half (at the very least) not 40-something percent and sometimes for years not even that. If there's less trans atlantic flying, so be it. We pull down they pull down.

Right. So the other airlines might think fair is each airline gets 1/3. The others might want the VA flying to count against our share. Now Brexit. Tomorrow maybe Alitalia leaves? The whole thing is in flux. The world is in flux.

Looking at just the 50%, you could "win" simply by having our partners pull back some flying, something they might be driven to do. Then what?

I don't really know exactly how/why Delta chose not to comply, and I don't endorse it, but here we are. I don't know why the MEC focused on "winning" the RJ fight. They own the product, I don't.

I think they screwed up both upside/downside protection on the RJ side, but only history will tell. History will also tell whether or not it was better to add a block-hour floor on WB flying, but I think that part actually makes sense.

The whole thing feels neutral to me. I'd give it a B-.

I'm also in favor of a BH floor. The real question is, is that floor high enough to more than make up for what we gave up?

I don't think it is, so I'll give that a D+ in this climate, and if things change maybe give it a C on the curve one day. From what I understand, that "floor" is a good bit below what we're already doing, and we're forgiving their current shortfall in the JV as well.

Like I said, I think the 2 year no cure period is a win in and of itself, but I'm not sure it makes up for it.

I've read that we are at 688,000.

And the other airlines would be wrong to think that. US population is around 345 mil. The population of all three representative regions for the JV partners is about 144 mil, for all three combined. Those numbers represent the revenue pool each brings to the table.

I guess using Ted's number, it's about 5.5% lower than current. Is that enough of a back-stop? I think the pilots can decide in MEMRAT.

These are European carriers. The EU population is 509 million. This isn't a deal for flying to France, Italy, and Holland.

Using population, we should get ~40% of the flying.

Seems like a self-defeating argument.

So why don't they? One has to assume because the demand is there. Given the existing demand, why should DAL pilots continually fly less of the market?

The underlying reason for my position is that we are supposed to be a UNION. Unions are supposed to be about protecting jobs, not outsourcing. I completely agree there has to be some reasonable flexibility in the interest of profitability and business flexibility. A 50% share seems pretty reasonable.

Does that include Great Britain?

And 40% isn't 1/3.

Yes, because they're still in. But we can take them out, if you prefer.

If you were an AF/KLM pilot, you'd say it's outrageous that our part of the VA alliance eats into their share, of course, so I'm not sure how we handle VA.