I am sure that once our chief gets called in on x-mas eve to do a round trip he will then finally hire some more. Let them use management guys to cover open flying. I have noticed that the flights they cannot staff have gone back to the 9.

I heard he actually was flying the line last week covering some of the open flying...in black slacks, a leather jacket, and NO HAT! Classic! :rolleyes:

Nice! Does this mean we will finally be able to start wearing the leather jacket?

Heh, I've seen a few around that already are. I'd imagine it's best done if you're doing a CDO, staying away from the MSP crewroom and IAD, or have incriminating photos of JK & AS.

Well, I don't think they mean to run the airline lean forever but I also don't see how hiring 20 or 30 more pilots would do us any good for almost 3 months...I think some of us have forgotten how LONG the training process takes here. (Hopefully this is looked at too but thats another post)

Once the last of the guys (Who where hired in Novemeber) make it out of the pipeline I think we will see some relief. Of course with the pulldown of flights in the spring and possibly some more cuts that DAL hasn't finalized yet we could very well be nicely staffed.
All these are just assumptions however as I am not made aware of these types of decisions or why they have been made.

On a side note for those of you that don't want to pick up open time...Then don't. However, this doesn't mean to call me and ask me to take your JA shift. ;)

I don't understand being upset about picking up open time and then getting upset about being JA'd....you know if no one picks it up they are going to mess up someones off days...So I welcome anyone to fly those shifts that I don't want.

Of course I have only been JA'd once in the past 18 months working here so I guess the problem doesn't seem so dire to me yet.

I find myself happy to be at an airline that has a lean staff as oppose to one that is letting ppl go...then you wouldn't have to complain about all this work we are doing :D