Wow, thanks for the career advice! That's really helpful since I'm not a grown up and can't make decisions for myself, much less take responsibility for my own actions. It's with the utmost appreciation that I say shut the phuck up $h1theads.

How about you guys just let us be positive and leave us alone. Most people I talk to that are here are positive about our future here, the negative ones are a very small minority. Looks like they just hang out here wishing people would be as miserable as they are.

The negative folks have either left or are leaving... of course we can see that the most unhappy want to make sure everyone knows...

You are missing the point. Delta tried but this has failed because the threat is hollow due to Endeavor's inability to staff, and the availability of other flying to move these pilots to. There is more flying out there right now than there is staffing for. So if Delta takes any planes away from Skywest, for example, Skywest will have no problem placing those pilots with flying at American or United.

Ok, now that I got THAT off my chest...

1- Downgrades. Yes, we are still downgradeing. If you don't understand why, read the Bloch award. Basically, due to current numbers, a 900 captain seat can only go to a legacy Mesaba pilot right now. So legacy Pinnacle captains loosing their 200 seats can't "displace" into the left seat of the 900. They can however go to the right seat of the 900 and continue to receive captain pay (thanks to an LOA) as an FO with a sweet schedule. Effectively nobody is being displaced from CA PAY to FO PAY.

2- No upgrades. If you are a legacy Pinnacle FO, I can see how you would feel this way. The Bloch award will bite you guys in the rear pretty hard. If that upsets you, remember the context that led to Bloch getting involved in the first place. XJ wanted a fairly equitable more or less DOH SLI, 9E wanted to staple XJ pilots essentially to the bottom of their list. Remember "hired not acquired"? Your idiot short sighted SLI negotiator was the best thing ever to happen to XJ and Colgan! If you are a legacy XJ FO, upgrades are forthcoming. In fact there where some on the phantom 14-08. You'll notice they where all prior XJ though.

3- 10 year upgrade due to "lifers". If we get to 81 airframes, which I for one doubt we will, they're saying ~900 line pilots. That's active flying bidding pilots. There are roughly 300 on the list that are either mgmt, FTI (full time instructors), LOA's, Mil, medical, union, or otherwise not bidding. MANY of those are the lifers of which you speak. Somebody claimed 300 lifers. Likely half of those are no-bids, leaving 150 flying. From company memos, 81 airplanes means 900 flying pilots (I have checked this with PR), 500 CA, 400 FO. 150 flying lifers means 350 "open" captain slots. Delta takes 144/year. Even if only 56 more get hired by anybody besides Delta, that's still 200 captains leaving per year. At that rate the full cadre of non-lifers gets replaced every 1.75 years. With 400 FO's, you're (your?) talking 2 year upgrade max, sustainable into perpetuity barring national economic collapse, and even then I think Delta will still be hiring. So if you where hired Jan 2015, you could be captain by 2017 and at a major of your choice by 2019 or before. To the bashers, just understand, things are different this time around. Again, barring disaster, we haven't seen this before, aside from maybe a brief glimpse in 2007 before Dubya changed the age.

3.5- FO hiring- Will not be an issue. There are always those willing to chase an upgrade, other companies will stagnate and become the next sinking ship with rats flocking to us. If it's really an issue, Delta has shown they will throw money at the problem. For the next two years, we have the highest paid FO's in the industry. Some will stay also who may have had one foot out the door before.

4- Delta's spotty history of wholy owneds. First of all, we ARE NOT SHUTTING DOWN. Not going to happen. It wouldn't make business sense. We are not Comair and Comair was not us. We have not struck and cost them millions, then tried to sue them for seniority integration. I'm sorry for those guys, but we are vastly different. Delta tried to get Comair set up like us. They wanted to take over much of their back of house to control costs. Comair said no thanks. Our management is Delta. Period. It's Delta guys. Delta is using every tool possible to make us a lean mean RJ operating machine. When everything is in place, and we are a single fleet (no 200's), I won't be surprised in the least if we are the only, or one of two 700/900 operators in DCI. Selling us would not make sense as they have no need for a massive influx of capital, and selling us would cost them control. Not sure if you've noticed, but they are ALL about control. And yes, they DO care about the product, and are pleased with the service that we provide. And they are able to control it much more closely through our close ties. Cost control is huge, but cost and quality do not exist in a vacuum. They will not take the lowest bidder despite horendous customer service (that's NWA you're thinking of).

5- We'll never see the bonus. I've heard it a bunch already. Delta will reneg on the $30k just like they renegged on the EtD. Ok, first of all, they have not renegged on the EtD. The few individuals hired under that program are still gauranteed the same provisions that they where before, including a job at Delta. And since we are not shutting down, and are upgrading, (see above) it should work out fine for them. Delta cannot "reneg" on the retention bonus as it is an LOA which is now a part of our contract. If they tried to not pay it arbitrarily, ALPA would take them to court in a pretty easy slam dunk contract law case. Now, that being said, Delta could come to our ALPA and say something like "Instead of paying out $56 million over the next two years, how about we just give you guys all seniority numbers in exchange for canceling that LOA". If the union agreed to that negotiation, I suppose then we would not see the money. But the point is the union would have to be involved and we would have a say. I for one would take that deal. Some would probably ***** and moan that they already spent the $30k and can't survive on whatever Delta is going to pay them. Can't please all the people...

6- Why did Delta do this to us? Very simply, after the merger with NWA, they inherited a legacy contract with 9e for like 225 50 seaters through 2020 or some ungodly timeframe. 9e was a managerial and performance wreck at the time, and was based in and had most of its operations in a market that Delta knew would be declining. They are masters of turning liabilties into assets. They saw an opportunity to essentially shut down a publically traded company that was a thorn in their side, even though they had a long term contract in place. If I wasn't the victim of it, I would say it was brilliant! Lo and behold, we've emerged looking more like Mesaba than ever and Delta got the regional that they always wanted but never got in Comair. Did everything go according to plan? Oh heck no! But I think at the end of the day, it went far better for them than they ever could have imagined.

7- But 200's are viable now with $70 oil. Somebody said something like "someone has to serve XYZ small market". Actually, no. No they don't. See, the thing is, at the other end of that trip from XYZ is a hub. The hub still has limited arrival and departure slots, gates, parking, infrastructure, etc. Furthermore, it takes the same number of rampers, gate agents, dispatchers, sim and ground instructors, caterers, mechanics etc. to get a 50 seater from the outstation to the hub as it takes for a 76 seater. These are "fixed costs". On a 200 they are just divided by a lower numerator. Coupled with no first class premium to further offset costs, plus an airplane that customers generally roundly despise and you can see why they are headed for the dessert. In fairness, I do beleive a FEW will persist, especially in MSP and DTW (and probably SLC) as these hubs can handle the capacity and have terminals that can't easily accomodate a 700/900, but the numbers will be significantly lower and I don't think it is in the plan for 9e to be operating them, but that's a forecast/opinion. Anyway, Delta is not stupid enough to build a business model around a momentary pull back in Brent Crude. Besides, news flash, they bought a refinery to control their fuel costs. If they wanted to operate 200's, it's not fuel cost that's justification not to. They just don't.

So what's coming?...Who knows. But they just bought a 900 sim in MSP with a rush on it and Delta paid cash. It was the fastest a sim in the US has ever gone from order to certification in history. At the same time, they ponied up another $800K for a mod to use the 200 sim as another 900 sim, bringing the total to four availble 900 sims. Considering how much one of those things costs, there is no way in HELL to justify four sims for a company with 900 pilots and 81 airplanes. Running at 75% that's 30 hours/year of sim time for every one of those 900 pilots! That's one hell of a PC!

Also, we just developed and disseminated new "post merger" manuals last year, at a significant expense. Now we are getting all new manuals again through the "TIGER" team. These manuals are basically the Delta manuals with our logo cut and pasted into them. Now, you can't tell me that they are doing this as a "favor" to us to aid our transition to Delta when some of us eventually go via the SSP. You figure it out.

Oh yeah, one more thing.
First year FO pay: $37500
Second year: $44700

I think that's all I've got.
If you have any questions I'll be in my office.

Love it! Awesome!

I do think this whole exercise has been a bit of a weeding. If Delta just gave out seniority numbers willy nilly to us upon exit from BK (not that they will ever), they would have ended up with all these yahoos. By putting us deliberately through a bit of a wringer for a couple years, they get to see who is willing to rise above it all. Just my .02.

I'm still on the fence about what is going on but I do know the loss of 300 spots in the SSP is a huge loss. Hopefully once they turn the ship around, if that is indeed the plan, they go back to 300. How the FO interview process works out and the attrition/hiring numbers over the next few months will probably be the turning point of things getting better or further spiraling out of control.

Anyway, I'm not following how 2 year upgrades are going to happen. If you have 900 pilots plus 300 non-bid and assume those 300 non-bids are in top 500 you then have to be in the top 800 to hold captain. If you were hired in January you would be number 1600. You would have to move up 800 spots, according to your numbers (144 SSP captains moving on each year and another 56 going elsewhere) it would be a 4 year upgrade.

Desperation is a stinky cologne

This gem here on #2 is laughable.
Otherwise, good post.

Loosing. That's funny. Maybe those legacy Pinnacle captains can tighten their 200 seats.





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