Lewbronski

I ran the numbers between Delta's new contract and SWA's current contract if the upgrade situation between the two airlines was turned on its head: if SWA all of the sudden sped up to a 6-month upgrade (which is what is currently available at Delta) and if Delta hit a brick wall and slowed to a 7-year upgrade (which is roughly the junior upgrade currently available at SWA). The results are depicted in the chart below.

Even if, hypothetically, SWA was the airline, instead of DL, with the super-quick upgrades available, DL would still come out $3.12M ahead of a SWA pilot after 30 years. That's 38.5% more career earnings at DL vs SWA even with a completely unrealistic upgrade scenario modeled. That's not including how much more retirement contributions that a DL pilot would receive into their B-Fund over the course of 30 years compared to a SWA pilot.

So that there's no confusion, I'm providing this info mainly for current (and future) SWA pilots so that we all have objective information, even if we use the most "kooly" of unrealistic company apologist scenarios, in terms of career compensation, to give us data upon which to build a "reasonable" case for dramatically higher rates. Using more realistic upgrade projections, we would need to achieve no less than a $400/TFP 12-year CA rate to simply pull even with DL's current career earnings. And that doesn't account for the substantially higher physical and career liability we incur over and above DL due to the increased number of takeoffs, landings, and block hours we fly versus DL.

Finally, not that it needs to be said, but career earnings is just ONE area of the contract in which we lag. There are many, many other areas of the contract that also trail the industry.

RJSAviator76

Lew, you're jumping the gun with this. This is the chart you should whip out when we have a TA and know the rates offered.

Now you're comparing potatoes and speed boats.

Mozam

Maybe he did not want to 2 more years to post the chart . The company is stonewalling, they have no intentions of giving a contract. We need they strike vote and go on strike as soon as we can

Lewbronski

I disagree 100%. When we have a TA means that the SWAPA BOD has voted to approve sending the TA to the membership. Unless they send it to the membership with an explicit, "We recommend a no vote," the TA will pass. IOW, at that point, it's almost assuredly too late to make any kind of a difference.

Right now, in other venues, our pilots are talking about basing our compensation demands on metrics like inflation, OAL narrow body rates (or possibly, if the stars align, OAL 757 rates), affordability, and revenue produced per pilot. All of those metrics will leave us short of the career compensation available at The Big 3, FedEx, and UPS earning an equivalent number of credit units per year.

As the saying goes, "You have to know where you're going in order to get there." Very few people in our pilot group are aware of how far we are behind the Big 3, FedEx, or UPS in terms of career compensation. Because Delta has been the first to move in this cycle, we are furthest behind them at the moment.

Most in our pilot group don't even realize that the approximately $12M in career compensation that Delta has realized as a result of their current contract is even a destination they could, if they wanted to, ask their travel agent to arrange for them on their upcoming block of vacation time. If the $12M (or more) in career compensation is equivalent to a dream vacation in an exotic far-away location, most of our pilot group seems to think there's a law or some other kind of restriction out there that says they can't have that dream vacation. Instead, they think they have to settle for a road trip to somewhere like the Arkansas Alligator Farm in Hot Springs.with a stay at the 2-star Shamrock Motel. So, that's what they're asking their travel agent to set up for them - the best they've been told they can have.

Does it not make sense that if our pilot group realized they could go on their dream vacation instead of the Arkansas road trip, that a fair-sized chunk of them would prefer the dream vacation? If they knew far enough ahead of time they could have the dream vacation, I'm pretty sure a lot of them would put in a call to their travel agent to make the arrangements to send them on the dream vacation instead of to the Alligator Farm, in spite of all the 5-star reviews on the Alligator Farm "experience."

We are still in the process of negotiating our next contract. That means we could still change our demands as the market changes (the RLA 100% allows this). It's not yet too late.

But. if we don't realize until departure day, after our travel agent has already made all the arrangements for the road trip, that we actually really want the dream vacation, it's probably gonna be too late to make that change - at least until the next time we can go on vacation in a few years.

And as far as the potatoes and speed boats thing goes, money earned during a 30-year career at Brand X is to money earned during a 30-year career at SWA as apples are to apples. It doesn't matter where I earn the money. It's still money. Money earned at Delta is just as fungible and just as valuable as money earned at SWA.

The chart in the original post compares the career compensation based on current rates in the current contracts at SWA and DL. Apples to apples.

The only thing about this particular chart that's not very realistic is the upgrade times. The upgrade times this chart is based on are much shorter than what is available in real life at SWA and much longer than what is available in real life at Delta.

Can you explain more clearly why you think it's more productive to wait to educate our fellow pilots on what the pilot marketplace has made available in our industry until after we have a TA? I think I'm totally missing how that makes sense.





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RJSAviator76

Lew, what are you basing our numbers on? Current rates?

Lewbronski

To quote myself from earlier:

RJSAviator76

That's precisely why it's not a valid comparison. In fact, it's like using myseniority to project the upgrade time here based on 0% growth and coming up with something like 16 years as was the case with me.

Your current data is better used in shorter spans. In other words, if you were to make a chart from January 2017 until January 2023 and highlighted the difference over a contract cycle, that would actually make sense. Or if you were to highlight the disparity now going forward and chart out the difference between Delta's new rates and ours going forward at say 6 month intervals without a contract and highlighting a minimum number we'd need just to reach parity, it's relatable. If you use Delta's new contract and present what kind of a gift they gave their company by giving in on their retro, again good numbers.

But spanning out 30 years and using the current contract rates while we're in mediation, and using their newly ratified rates as comparison... you're projecting way too far out so the numbers just don't make sense because your chart presumes we'll never ratify a contract for the next 30 years.

Prospect

The numbers the chart seem to project also just don't add up. You're telling me that after 9 years, the SWA pilot was a captain for 8.5 years and the DL only for 2 years, and they're basically even on earnings? Yeah right. Some assumptions in there as far as hours or something go are flawed.

waterskisabersw

Instead of looking at it as a "this is what we WILL make and what they WILL make, forever", look at it as "this is how much ground we have to make up in order to pass delta NOW."

We can even use a management tactic of "here's the pie, divy it up how you choose." Right now, we're X-million behind. How management closes that gap and puts us ahead is up to them.

Also, I think this is a valuable chart to post because one of the common things we all hear is "the delta 6 month captain thing is a fluke, it'll stable out to be closer to our upgrade time, and then the compensation will even out." This throws that excuse out the window.

Even if we flipped to their model of 6 months upgrade, management STILL needs to overcome a multi million dollar gap in career compensation to make us competitive.

You said that graph assumes that we won't ratify a contract for 30 years. It also assumes that delta won't ratify another contract for 30 years. Those two things cancel each other out. We need to make sure this contract exceeds Delta's, because if we're always starting out X million behind, the end integer is meaningless, but one can still make the intellectually honest assumption that the ratio of that gap will remain the same unless something changes (I.e. we get widebody rates at some point along the seniority progression to account for the reality of the big 3).

Like I said, this shows how much catching up we have to do.

Negotiate, and vote, accordingly.

RJSAviator76

Garbage in = garbage out.

When I was hired here back in 2016, we were all using myseniority.com to project our upgrade time and try to figure out when we'd hold ATL...

Well, the fancy looking graph at 0% growth said we'd upgrade in 16 years and then if we projected 3% growth, we would upgrade in 13 or so. Again... garbage in = garbage out. It's way too simplistic and if something is that much out of whack, it'll generally get tuned out and ignored.