FIIGMO

No I did not! This seems to be an issue. I get some then not others! We need an APC meeting ASAP! Ill try the ole land line......

Falcon7

Certainly good news. With the 717 delivery schedule I'm not too surprised. The first ones won't be on line till after this summer, but the fleet should be in full swing in 2014. That should drive additional staffing.

Wasatch Phantom

Slow,

Question for you (or anyone else who knows...),

Isn't there a group of retired Delta pilots (known a DP3 or something similar) suing the PBGC because of the way the Delta pension assets were sold and the way the retirement calculations were made?

I want to say I saw something a while ago that if they win the suit those pilots in PC-4 category would get increased pension checks, as well as the retirees.

Do you know any more of the details on the lawsuit and its chances of success?

Check Essential

DP3 Appeal

If you are a "deadzoner", watch out for your blood pressure if you read and understand this appeal thoroughly.

Some of these boys got a $million dollar+ lump sum and are receiving $150,000 annually on top of that and they are still appealing for more.

And every dollar they might get from the PBGC would reduce the tiny amount the rest of us will get.

Bucking Bar

Except he's wrong. He says C2K lasted until just six months short of its amendable date. The scope section failed at least 4 times, beginning in about six months after ratification.

The flaws in C2K were apparent to everyone I knew who projected the result of a 3 to 1 block hour ratio with 500+ new jets already ordered for DCI. Conspiracy, hardly. It was obvious.

Bucking Bar

D-ALPA has "won" a number of times and they (we) have led the legacy carriers in recovering pay despite economic challenges. D-ALPA (including our f-NWA leadership) pulled off the largest merger in history more successfully than any other working group ever has. I think D-ALPA wins about every time that it really wants to.

ALPA National has always supported the Delta MEC in it's negotiations. You can't really say ALPA National has ever crammed down outsourcing on a major carrier. This Pinnacle mess was as close to a cram down as I've ever seen and our MEC did not object ... rather, they could not restrain themselves from publishing (prior to meeting) that they saw no violation and had no issue with another pilot group being authorized to cut a deal with Delta management.

It is my belief (ie undocumented opinion based on observation of fact), D-ALPA loses when it wants to. Most pilots have nearly blind faith in lawyers, which is fine I guess, but they are not able to distinguish between a lawyer who explaining law and a lawyer who is advocating for his client. Lawyers use the rules as they best apply to their client's position and as we heard at the Supreme Court this week, very good rationale can be used on both sides of an issue.

You bring up the RAH issue, which is tangential to the legal opinions that led to the TWA DFR suit with regard to binding third party non signatories to a labor agreement. The control exercised by ALPA National at times (not always) seems to work like this:

• Big MEC wants to do something a bit not quite right
• ALPA National's President wants to keep big MEC happy
• ALPA National's President takes concern to ALPA Attorney
• ALPA Attorney finds justification to do what big MEC wants
• ALPA Attorney talks to President and with President's blessing advises big MEC what they want to hear
• Dissenters are told "because ... legal" and marginalized because pilots generally are not attorneys and lack credibility, even when they are correct.

Every once in a while, a pilot gets his own attorney sues ALPA and ALPA delays as long as they can before dragging out the checkbook (or going to trial ... and there is no need to comment on the trial record)

This is the only explanation that seems to account for the fact that ALPA's attorneys can get ALPA sued, yet hold on to their jobs without complaint from big MECs who are often informally the culpable defendants in these actions.

In any organization (and assumably Delta too) an employee who's work product kept getting the Company sued would likely be fired.

alfaromeo

I will support this when Moser and all his friends take their lump sums, all of them, and throw them back into the pot for all of us to share. Those guys took their lumps sums because they wanted to get as much as they could for themselves and their families, they did not care what happened to the rest of us. Now, after we happened to work out a successful claim and note along with a successful PC-5 recovery (which helped those guys too by the way) they say they want us to share in the bounty. They took all that they could betting that Delta would fail, now that it succeeded they want some of that too. Just imagine if Delta had failed, would they now be asking for a petition to share their lumps sums with us? I think not. They made their bet and now they want us to cover their losses, that is not the way it works.

Falcon7

Bar, you have many insightful and informational posts. I like reading your stuff, but you were talking about preplanned bankruptcies at Delta in 1998, with Leo Mullin, 7 years before bankruptcy, and he wasn't even the CEO at the time Delta filed. Delta had its most profitable years ever at the time you said Delta was planning on BK. You put together loose pieces of scattered information to fit into a nice tidy theory, but your timeline and facts were all wrong. You say the scope section failed, but the fact is the contract had triggers in it they were complied with. You don't like it, I don't like it, but that doesn't make it a preplanned event.

Six months after C2K there was a little event up in New York and Washington, revenues tumbled, an economic collapse of the industry followed, along with 2 wars and multiple airline failures and bankruptcies. It's a fun game on the internet to construct theories that this was all preplanned, but not part of any real life critical analysis of where we were, how we got to where we are and how we should move forward.

Check Essential

That whole era was a disgrace.
Management knew it and ALPA knew it. Insiders from both sides were grabbing all the cash they could and heading for the exits.

The lump sum trust babies and the executives were all guilty.

And of course we all remember the worst example of legalized looting:

sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data

2002 DELTA SUPPLEMENTAL EXCESS BENEFIT PLAN

...

Further, in order to attract and retain highly qualified and skilled
management personnel and to reward such personnel for past service, the Company wishes to provide benefits to certain Key Employees that will not be available to other Employees.
<PAGE>
To provide benefits for Key Employees, their Eligible Family Members and beneficiaries that cannot be provided under the Retirement Plan and Disability and Survivorship Plan because of Plan restrictions, the Company has established the Delta Supplemental Excess Benefit Plan, which is hereby restated
as the 2002 Delta Supplemental Excess Benefit Plan (the "Plan").

Scoop

MSP Base Visit 27 March 2013

We were asked not to post some discussion items on Forums and I will honor that request.


Overall – Things are going good and we are doing very well. Senior management is well aware of the hundreds of things Pilots do, day in and day out to keep the operation running smoothly and appreciate it.


DAL should show a small 1st Qtr profit for the first time since 2000. This is important to the financial community. Shooting for $ 1.9 B for the year. Mentioned something about the S&P 500 – either we are hoping to be included in the index, or looking for investor grade status, maybe both. I couldn’t hear this because of the cow like chewing of the guy next to me. Oh wait, that was me chewing, disregard. J


As previously posted – the only new info for me was these specific manning numbers:


Summer 13 at 84 ALV we would over-manned by 400.
Summer 14 - Under-manned by 300.
Summer 15 under-manned by 600. He was very specific about the summer 13 numbers being accurate at ALV of 84. Did not specify for the next years but Crew Resources is very aware that we will need to start hiring and are still pushing to hire. They do not want to get behind on the hiring because they know it will be hard to catch up.



Some other numbers:
894 age 65 retirees in the next 5 years if everyone stays until 65. They are prudently assuming a lower average age. So with mainline growing, not sure of the exact number but I have seen it, maybe 692 aircraft, it will not be too long until we will need over 2000 Pilots. I know, we have all heard this before, but like I said they are pushing for hiring but are being denied.


Training capacity. It was put out that we could sustain 60-70/month minimum for years, with a surge capability at slower times. 60x12=720, 70x12=840, so with a few surge months above these numbers 1000/year should not be a problem.


201 guys still on bypass, I think this is furlough only since he specifically mentioned “bypass” so it probably does not include MIL guys. Out of these 201 they were hoping for about 50 -60 to return.


When hiring starts it will be mostly flows: I think he said the first 20/month from Compass and then 9 month from Mesaba. Over 29/month will be off the street including the Pinnnacle dudes with preferential interviews. After the first few months of each year when Compass and Mesaba hit their annual limit (I think 25%) all the new hires will be off the street.



They are anticipating the 717 and the M88 will be the new hire spots but when the movement hits high gear some new hires may go directly into the 737. No anticipation of New hires going into 757 and above like during the 2008 hiring cycle.


Aircraft retirements: DC-9s and 73 757s to be retired in the next 5 years. So with the 737-900s and the 717s coming Mainline is growing.


M88 FMS upgrade. The FMS Nav data is starting to severely limit the MD. Example DFW alone consumes 14% of the memory. Nav data base is growing each year so shortly the MD would be limited in capability, and with a lot of years/cycles left they decided to upgrade. To me this means they plan on keeping it around for the long haul – good news!


JFK upgrade – they are aware that buses are not the perfect solution for T-2 to T-4. T-2 will have maybe 7 years of life left after the upgrade which is only phase 1. There is a potential phase 2 upgrade that will be looked at.


MSP base size – MSP is stable and if anything will grow a little from now on. On a size adjusted basis it is our most profitable hub and is an important part of our network. Mainline MSP will not continue to shrink and go the way of MEM as some on here have been posting.


AE results – Was the best they could do under the no hiring constraints and had some compromises within it. For example they did not award all the 737B positions because they did not want to pull guys from other positions. The next AE will be in August and will mostly continue to fill 717 and 737 positions.


With NYC upgrades in work the next emphasis will be the west coast – mostly SEA. LAX is gate limited. The network guy was pretty good and I was impressed, even if he is a young hipster with black shoes, blue shoelaces, and hipster glasses. I am not sure if they wanted us to talk about this so I will only say that I think things are looking good and I am cautiously optimistic that DAL is making the right moves.

Overall – I think our guys are sincere and want to grow and improve DAL. They know what we as Pilots do and appreciate it.


Scoop