Sorry super but I'm right on this.

You are correct that delta and nwa saw first hand how selling scope erodes EVERYTHING and yet you did NOTHING (from what I have seen) about it on your last contract. Even nwa allowed for the creation of compass. What did they think compass was for, growth? I hope you can tell me you guys reigned in some of the 50-76 airplanes in this past contract but from what I've been told and read it was mainly $$$. I've even heard that it allows for GROWTH of them if delta grows. I guess 255 (or so) 76 seaters just weren't enough.

To add insult to injury about how little nwa pilots cared about compass pilots they even gave them a worse contract than theirs and yours was a bankruptcy contract. Now that's insulting!!!

I hope you can prove me wrong.

Spares was an issue and managements' decision to not count them resulted in 2 extra large RJs at Comair, another 2 or 3 at ASA, and so on at the rest of the carriers....

Management could deem 200 airplanes in the desert as "spares" so the operating fleet appears to have been settled on for purposes of figuring out Section 1 limitations.

Even if the limits were violated, I do not have a high degree of confidence ALPA would raise the issue.

This bogus information that was refuted during arbitration hearings. The vast majority of airframes will be good into 2020 and beyond. The 2012 issue has to do with navigation performance - and your MD88's have the same issue. Expect GPS retrofits on both. Again the 2012 airframe inspection/heavy check time-out info is false.

No I wasn't offended. Thanks though.

No, you are right. Senior NWA went a long way to protect their pensions. Delta went an equal distance to protect as much of their contract as they could.

Neither of us had a gun to our head in the JPWA negotiations and we failed to take the DC9 replacements at Compass and Mesaba back. I wrote my Reps, cornered them in the Lounge and talked to them about scope. My FO Rep told me "scope does not matter" and "scope does not work."

Yes, NWA sold the DC9 flying to Compass and Mesaba. However, we failed to act when the opportunity existed to fix the error.

But with the fuel burn of a 757, the DC9 needs to be updated. The majority of our fleet (including the 757's) is getting old. Since the 757's arrived management has bought two generations of turboprops and three generations of RJ's. Most of the investment in aviation's future is not being made into the equipment we fly. That must change.

I am sure the airframes are good to 2020. However they require extra inspections under the aging aircraft rules. All airframes require major airframe inspections at various intervals. Delta management has stated they will not make the investment in the nines to extend them. I posted here a year ago that we would be down to 62 nines at year end. I was called all kinds of names for saying that. I was wrong. We ended the year with 58. Even premerger NWA planned on the airframes being out of service by 2012.
The MD-88's at Delta have all been retrofited and the AHERS systems replaced with INS and they have LNAV. They comply with all airways navigation requirements for the future. They will not however be able to shoot RNP approaches. The Majority of Delta's fleet does not have GPS including the 757/767 fleet. Even the ER's are only about 30 percent GPS. GPS is however not required for future airways Nav. The 767ER's are slowly getting a GPS retrofit as well as some of the 757's. Really nice to have the GPS birds in South America.

Really nice to have the GPS birds in South America.


Tell me about it. It makes life a lot easier!!

I didn't think DAL ALPA had any scope left.

Heyas,

Just checked with offical company documents. Sailings numbers, as expected, are not accurate.

Nu

.......deleted.....

Well, first of all, we did not end the year with 58 DC-9's. As of a few weeks ago, from one of the higher ups, we have 68 or 69 (I admit, I can't remember the exact number). He said we were supposed to go down to that number, but with the ecomomy the way it was, we weren't. Thus the reason for more DC-9 pilots.

It's not even fun anymore because apparently Sailling will never stop.

Actually we were lied to very convincingly that Compass would not replace DC9 flying - charts, spreadsheets, power point presentations, our negotiators, attorneys, ever so caring Senior LEC Reps and MEC Chairman telling us in a barrage of road shows, emails, and MEC Comms that everything was under control, remain calm, do not worry, and support the TA.

How we were ever so f$%&ing naive is amazing. Our lesson, and what happened on your side of the aisle needs to be a wake call to every junior pilot that some of those elected to represent all pilots on the seniority list will sell your seniority down the river in a blink while protecting theirs.

They can honestly tell you "Scope does not matter" - it doesn't - to them.

AND they will be flying those 69 aircraft (more to come) 3 hrs more a day, for a composite 40% increase in block hours over forecast - hence the ~200 additional pilots.

Wrong again, no suprise there.:rolleyes: Premerger NWA did not plan on the DC9 being out of service by 2012. Please STOP spreading your ridiculous rumors and inaccurate info. It's getting really old. In case you didn't realize, the list is done.:rolleyes:

What the heck are you smoking?:confused:

I am smoking NWA own fleet plan and 10q reports. The last 10Q available is for the quarter ending Sep 30. At that point NWA had the following DC-9's total on the property.
DC-9-30's 22
DC-9-40's 11
DC-9-5o's 34
Total 67
Retirements planed in the 4 quarter 9.
Total 58

I do not know if all the retirements occurred. I do know that we started the year with 100 nines. Just a few years ago NWA had 180 nines. If they are not being retired where are they going!!!!!

Probably the same thing that 3X denied jumpseater was....

I think we deserve an apology on that one. I know I got worked up over that one, apparently for no reason. :rolleyes:

(Ok Sailing, I'll stop. But, it would be nice if you gave us an update.) :D

Sailling,

You can't go from a statement of fact that we ended the year with 58 DC-9's to "I don't know if all the retirments occured." You habe to qualifiy your remarks with something like, "The planned to have 58 DC-9's" or "The last I saw, they had 67 DC-9's and they were planning on parking 8 more" or "I really don't know how many DC-9's we have, I'm just typing without researching." That way people can take only those statements with a grain of salt. If you don't, then people will take EVERYTHING you say with a grain of salt. Hell, maybe even the whole shaker. :D

New K Now

Mmmmmmmm.....salt.......tequila....mmmmmmm:D:D

I have no update to give you on the jumpseat. I have no reason to believe he was not telling me the truth. He was my copilot in recurrent. He handled it through the jumpseat coordinator. I am sure if you ask your jumpseat coordinator he would be aware of it. He is one of the few DAL pilots who lived in MSP. He commutes to NYC. He was as I mentioned offered a seat in the back if one was available but was told he could not ride in the cockpit because of the tensions between the groups.

Well since I can't read the future I don't know what the 4Q 10Q will report. It will however be out in a few days and we will know if they retired the 9 more planned nines. I hope they did not. It would be a good thing. The fact remains however that the aircraft are approaching 40 years old. They are not going to be around long term period. Why is that so hard to accept. In the last 5 years Delta retired two fleets of more modern aircraft in the same size range. When I posted that NWA would be down to 62 nines several of you came on here and stated that they would not go below 90 airframes this year. Well we know they got to 67 so I would say my numbers were just a bit more accurate! Even if we end up at the end of the year with 67 airframes 1/3 of the fleet was retired in 12 months.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,nevermind. It will get out soon enough. Let's keep our heads boys. :(

Here is a old NWA press release on the Nines. Note the 104,000 requirement. Delta does not plan to perform this maintenance. NWA estimated the aircraft would 100,000 cycles in 2010.

LONDON - A detailed structural safety analysis was conducted before Northwest Airlines [NWAC] decided to keep flying its DC-9 fleet another 15 years. The carrier operates a fleet of 173 DC-9s.

Northwest plans to fly these airplanes to the year 2010. Upon retirement, the planes will have accumulated 40 years of service.

Speaking at an aging airliner conference here, Brad Mueller, Northwest's manager of fleet planning, said the DC-9 was a perfect fit for routes it was flying. The question was whether the airplane's structure could be flown to 100,000 flight cycles or more.

"Douglas had tested the airplane to more than 200,000 cycles," Mueller explained. At the time Northwest decided to invest about $10 million per plane for hushkits, new interiors, and other upgrades, Mueller said Northwest's DC-9's had logged about 65,000-70,000 cycles.

The manufacturer's extended fatigue testing verified the durability of the design. "This was the single biggest concern," Mueller said. "If the study had not satisfied the question (of structural safety), we wouldn't have done it."

Northwest plans to fly its DC-9's to about 100,000 cycles, at which point they will be retired. "Major modifications are needed at 104,000 cycles," Mueller explained.

What does that mean?:confused:

Back to the scope issue. EVERYONE should be paying attention to whats going on with UAL now and Aer Lingus. SCOPE IS A HUGE ISSUE. UAL has plans for 1000 pilot furloughs and has now signed a deal to use a subsidiary of Aer Lingus which will even outsource jobs from lingus pilots. This is a direct attack on pilots and our careers. It must be stopped and the line must be drawn.



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Statement from Captain Steve Wallach,
Chairman, United Master Executive Council Air Line Pilots Association
Regarding United’s ‘Innovative’ Partnership With Aer Lingus January 22, 2009

The day after reporting one of its worst quarterly financial results in history and after furloughing an additional 254 pilots (bringing the total to 606 pilots), United Airlines announced today that it has entered into what it calls an “innovative” partnership with Aer Lingus.

Aer Lingus has advised the Irish press that this joint venture will operate an Aer Lingus aircraft with neither United nor Aer Lingus employees, under a separate operating certificate and under newly established wages and working conditions. Obviously, this partnership will be accomplished at the expense of United’s and Aer Lingus’ own pilots and other employees. This development, where United attempts to establish an airline operation without the use of United aircraft or employees, is nothing less than the outsourcing of jobs to an international company, and clearly demonstrates that this management continues to make business decisions without regard to its pilots and other employees.

"The United pilots are exploring every option to put an end to the company’s blatant disregard and lack of loyalty to the United Airlines brand.”

Doesn't the United MEC have a seat on the board?

You are correct, Scope is the issue. I believe we have a pretty good section for international code share and the company hands are tied a bit. They are at or near the limit as we speak. The whole point of my posts on the nines is that we should accept that they are going away and work on a method to recapture the flying. I have posted this several times.

You're right, we need to fight and fight hard to ensure whats happening at UAL and Midwest NEVER happens at Delta.

We don't have to recapture DC9, and 76 seat plus flying - it's already ours - we have to prevent it being eroded further. THE best ways to accomplish that is actually have DAL mainline pilots flying 76 seaters.

It will be far easier to negotiate it away if we never have DAL pilots flying those acft, than if it means booting DAL pilots cockpits to ease Scope.

The path of least resistance to that end is to integrate Compass onto the end of our list.

Delta was a big part of the Midwest debacle......DAL could have merged Midwest in at the same time as NWA.....they chose not too.I didn't see more than 5 DAL pilots " fighting" for my lost job at Midwest due to the RAH subcontracting.

Especially since it is already represented by the fNWA, now Delta MEC.

In addition to mainline giving away jobs, it also gave a bunch of great layover cities to Compass. Yet another reason why any mainline pilot should want that fleet back to where it should have been to begin with.

dal didn't buy Midwest nor did Nwa own a controlling interest in Midwest. The scope language was evidently very weak in the Midwest contract thus mgmt taking advantage of it. Delta and the delta pilots couldn't have prevented what happened to y'all. We don't have your planes and didn't merge with Midwest either. Blaming delta pilots would be like blaming air china pilots because they have as much to do with it as we do.

Sorry to hear about your loss, I think it's messed up what Midwest pulled.

Thanks for your support. However it pains me to see NWA flying alot of the routes we flew before NWA bought us.MKE - LAS, MKE - LAX come to mind.I get furloughed, YX "hands" NWA some primo trips....I'm sure you can see just how it smells from my perspective.....

yep ........

Hunter - Repsectfully, your perspective is not correct. NWA interfered with AirTran's plan to buy you. In doing so they pumped 300 million into your Company and kept it aloft. Had they not (been so stupid) as to try to thwart AirTran, the result would have been the financial insolvency of the AirTran MidWest combo during the summer of 08 when AirTran got down to around 500 million in total liquidity.

If you ever wanted to come over to Delta, your resume with experience at an airline with excellent service would look good. If there is a silver lining, I'd hope it came with a letter that said "welcome aboard."

Thanks Bucking Bar, I would very much appreciate a priority interview when/if DAL starts hiring.;)

While I agree the Airtran buyout may have led to the whole ship sinking during the oil bubble, the end result for me is going to comparable it seems......

Yes, I hear you about ALPA, that's just what we were told on the conference call....that it was our fault we didn't have strong enough language.I thought that's what I've been paying 2% for.......it's very frustrating to be sure.

Ok....b S
 

I hate it for you guys, but explain to me how DAL, and more specifically DAL pliots, could have done anything for you guys. When that all went down, we were not even merged with NW yet.(not that it would have mattered)

What could we, or even DAL as a company have done? And what could they (DAL) do, that would have benefeited them (the company)? No airline mgmt is going to throw a lifeline to a pilot group just to be nice.

Why would they merge Midwest? just to be nice?

Well said. If the Delta pilots won't stand up for themselves, how can anyone else do it for them?

Hasn't NWA always done a MKE-LAX flight? They used to have a DC-10 on it.

As to taking on Midwest, keep in mind that there was an on again and off again merger with NWA well past this time last year. DAL couldn't have taken on Midwest if it didn't even know for sure it'd be merging with NWA.

...
And oh yes, count me in, staple Compass and lets start ordering E175s. 100% for it. And my vote is to only staple Compass and not any of the other DCIs. So thats my two votes. Actually, third vote, give furloughed Midwest pilots preference in interviewing, they earned it.