I heard that an ATL base will open in Mar 2014.

I would think if the company wants to open a 747 base in ATL they would do it before Jan 1, 2015. Even if it might be expensive to do so, it would have to be cheaper than a massive re-bid after that date.

ATL has how many whale departures/day? NYC has 2 year-round.

All I am saying is that there are a lot of more senior guys that will either displace into those seats (remember a bunch of 757s are going away), or there could be a change of base. (Although crew resources vehemently denies that.) ref: November monthly update

But doing it before that date reopens the green book/red book wounds only. After 2015, it is one big happy family. :D

You certainly could be right though.... fun to speculate either way.

Those wounds were scabbed over and picked off a long time ago. But it's nice to not have to worry about that stuff anymore.

Crew Resources seems to be going out of their way to discredit that every month, saying they need a minimum number of departures before they will do this.

Sometimes those monthly updates seem to be directed at the Network Planners as much as they are the pilots. Flight Ops can't seem to make those guys understand that crews don't just materialize out of thin air at a moment's notice.

Right now the 747 has exactly one departure out of ATL, to NRT. Anyone remember what happened when they opened a NYC 777 base, just to cover one trip (JFK-BOM)?

I doubt they want a repeat of that cluster f...k.

Now, if in the future, they decide to add a whole bunch of 747 trips out of ATL, then they might actually open a category there, but for one trip? Doubtful.

I agree. There would need to be several additional daily departures on the 747 fleet out of ATL before the company would ever seriously consider adding the new categories.