sherpster

[QUOTE=Name

I'm not upset, the pay is better now and the company is sustainable, my base options and flying are much more varied etc. I just hope the company can stick around and not be mortgaged into bankruptcy.[/QUOTE]

Does that 25B+ debt worry you ?, seems a little excessive

Mover

Interest rates are at historic lows and we have some of the newest aircraft.

Clint

I sponsor new hires and in the past couple months I've had a couple LGA guys come straight off OE (initial training) into a line. I had one PHX guy go into a hybrid line his first month (mix of line and pseudo-reserve). Part of that may be due to more senior pilots bidding reserve on the holidays, but still.
I have an airbus bud still on probation who transferred to CLT after only a couple months in LAX and immediately went into a line. That's a result of a lot of guys who live in domicile and bid for reserve trying to get paid for not flying.

It totally depends on where you are. At junior bases where there's more movement, you'll go quicker. It also depends on your equipment. That's a general overview, I'm sure Slice can provide stats.

jcountry

This is a good observation.

Even though delta has a bunch of cash on hand, they have one hell of a lot of old planes to replace. They will need to incur a massive amount of debt.

That said, I sure do wish we would spend more paying down debt, and zero on stupid stock buy backs. The nearly 10 billion spent of buybacks hasn't moved the stock a bit.

Name User

Delta bought the CS aircraft for under $20m a copy where the sticker is around $80m. They are way smarter than we are at buying airplanes. When AA bought all those Airbus and Boeing aircraft in the bankruptcy they paid through the nose.

Delta will just buy our used aircraft in 5-10 years and keep printing money.

I have a hunch that if AA hadn't of bought all these new airplanes, which are last decades technology BTW, Parker would've retrofitted the -80s. Yeah it's great our airplanes are new but let's look at some facts:

• Delta has a higher reliability than us despite their fleet avg being a decade older
• Delta buys used and retrofits where as we buy and lease new
• AA bought the old technology engines and those airplanes will be on property 20 years...not very forward thinking
• AA has significantly more debt due to this and higher operating costs in the form of fuel costs

Delta is just a better managed company, they will always be, as long as our management continues making bad decisions. You know, those are the guys that actually determine if we make money or not (eye roll).

Sliceback

Maybe PBS is really changing things because it’s interesting how junior, or quick, guys are becoming line holders. I used September because Nov/Dec have different bidding patterns because of vacations and October is low season in the Caribbean which can also change bid results.

I checked LGA, PHL, DCA/UDC, CLT, MIA, and LAX. Guys are becoming line holders almost immediately. LAX and MIA are taking the longest. MIA was roughly 200 numbers senior to the junior guy and LAX was 400-600(two fleets). That’s roughly a year. But there’s a bunch of bodies in that 400-600 guys so you can’t say “I’ll get it in a year.”

It was also interesting seeing how junior line holder was for the recent CA upgrades. Using 900 retirements per year for upgrades five years in the future it was 3-17 months (roughly 250-1400 seniority numbers). Another base was immediately to 6-8 months depending upon fleet type. That was true in another base. Several bid statuses had the junior CA immediately holding lines.

So if recent bidding holds true the ability to upgrade and hold a schedule immediately might be the norm in 5-7 years. But you’re flying the exact sequences (trips) dozens, or hundreds, of guys specifically avoided.

3XP is the AA term/program/code that allows you to see what guys are being awarded. Goes back to 1998. A new hire will have months, or years, to track what they can expect if they bid a different seat. Changing fleet manning in bases, like the current 767 and 787 fleets shifts, complicates the analysis. Sometimes you just have to leap without knowing the details. A FO debated entering a 767 CA bid. He didn’t “I didn’t expect it to come to me.” It went junior to him but might never go that junior again. The next job vacancy run has closed and will be posted later this week or early next week. 767 shuffling into PHL is being watched by many. I spoke with a guy last week who didn’t realize that 767 FO had gone junior to him. He is now seriously considering bidding it.

Buzzlightyear

The official stated purpose is to drive up the stock price by reducing the number of outstanding shares but what would the shares have done had their been no $10 billion buyback? The stock price would be lower. So, $10 billion spent to ensure status quo.

WhiskeyDelta

And if we do incur “a massive amount of debt,” it’ll bring us up to what AA and UAL have since we’d be starting from a lower debt amount. Throw in a much better credit rating to finance any new aircraft and things are not as dire as you are making it out to be with regards to our long-term fleet needs.

Besides, most pax don’t care how old the plane is as long as the pax experience is modern. Thus our investment in cabin refurbs for even our oldest of mainline fleets. I had a pax ask how old the 737-800 she was on and I told her almost 20 years. She couldn’t believe it because how new the interior was.

mainlineAF

Congratulations!

Name User

Stock buybacks attempt to do one thing and one thing only and that is increase earnings per share (EPS). Wall Street falls over themselves for companies that consistently show a growing EPS number and will assign them a higher multiple.

Google the US airlines and look at their multiples. Most are right around 10 except for one...SWA.