georgetg

They are and yet I'm no longer "living the dream" because Delta has given up on the West coast and farms out the flying to a JV...

Cheers
George

tsquare

What we need is a contractual definition of "new". The first part of your second paragraph pretty much sums up my fear. The only change I would make to it is that I would change the highlighted word to cost. Sure we are the low cost side of the equation... unless DAL is getting money for nothing as in AF pilots doing the flying (for which DAL pays nothing) and we still get half the profit. If I were making that decision it would be a no brainer. And knowing that management hardly ever looks at increased generation of revenue in a downturn vice cost reduction, it's painfully obvious what they will attempt. I hope I am wrong, but I've seen this movie before. Oh, and as far as undercutting our "bretheren" from AF... the only part of that that bothers me is that we can do it due to our pathetic payrates... I have zero loyalty to foreign pilots (who btw have government paid retirements..) etc...

georgetg

Slow agreed, there are some good protections in our contract.
But without more protections in place we will see diminishing returns for all pilots except for the very top 5-10%

The last two DAL S AE/MDs should be a wakeup call to all
We parked a few 75s and the effect rippled through the company

If the DC9 replacement isn't flown by Delta pilots...

well, you tell me!

Cheers
George

slowplay

Edit: just saw your response after I posted this. I agree that the DC-9 equivalent replacement (if/when/whatever that may be) is a Delta jet flown by Delta pilots. Remember we have a bunch of A319/737-700 with almost identical seating capacity to the DC-9-50.

Delta "gave up" on the west coast in the mid '90's after losing a ton of money trying to be LAX's preferred airline. There have been two attempts to grow LA service since then, one with RJ's and one with mainline. Both lost buttloads of money. Same thing is true for AA and UAL's attempts to dominate the airport. They didn't work. Even LUV has constrained their growth in LAX.

To say that you're no longer living the dream because of the JV is not accurate. You may have the opportunity to do some "super premium" flying because of the JV instead of experiencing a DFW like dream.

georgetg

That's just it.

Numbers are all that matter

ASM
Departures
Enplanements
Aircraft
Pilots

All of our outsourcing/JV/DCI has to be pegged as a percentage of what Delta Pilot fly.

The Southwest guys just fought for and got exactly that assurance...

from my buddy at a recent meeting with Gary:

Cheers
George

Hawaii50

I'm amazed that guys that are so hard over about DCI flying seem to think Alaska flying DL pax is great. My opinion is that we'd be a lot better off focusing on limiting/regaining domestic codeshare flying. The West Coast was the one area this combined company could have grown and provided new Capts jobs for the junior guys who seem fully focused on regaining RJ flying. I'm for that, of course, but the job I want is the one AS guys are doing flying DL pax up and down the coast. We may have a lot better chance convincing management to take over flying done by a major airline than taking on regional flying with it's rock bottom cost structure. We don't need to dominate LAX, just add choice to routes with a better product than our competitors to start. We have more to offer potential customers post-merger as well.

We can't compete, the market's saturated, blah, merger, blah, whatever, on the West Coast, but VA can come waltzing in with a Song product ripoff and do OK right out of the chute. Who's next? Airtran? ......Merger with AS? Nice diversion by the Co. to make us think this is OK. Now is the time to "convince" the company we want that flying before it becomes too firmly entrenched and we never get it back.

MD80

The FAA is considering the requirement that all airline pilots have a ATP rating and 1500 hrs. Not that its going to happen... but would it solve the problems in airline mergers/bankruptcy/code-shares if the FAA required a minimum flight experience.

example:

Aircraft seats..................PIC required Total Time

51......................................5,000
101...................................10,000
151+ ................................15,000


It would be a Class of ATP license (A,B,C) and it would allow a experienced pilot to get rehired as a Captain. Any airline that was expanding quickly would want to hire laid-off pilots with flight time. Any LCC or code-share airline would have to have experienced pilots and not 20 somethings out of flight school.

sailingfun

We can't compete, the market's saturated, blah, merger, blah, whatever, on the West Coast, but VA can come waltzing in with a Song product ripoff and do OK right out of the chute. Who's next? Airtran? ......Merger with AS? Nice diversion by the Co. to make us think this is OK. Now is the time to "convince" the company we want that flying before it becomes too firmly entrenched and we never get it back.[/quote]


VA doing well out of the chute???? I think you should read a little about their financial performance. Not only are they losing tons of money but they are double digits away in revenue verses cost to get to the break even point. They were supposed to be 4 times the size they are now in their original business plan. Their investors have seen where they are heading and bailed out using buyout clauses. They have yet to turn a dime of profit in any quarter.

georgetg

The RJ attempt (with Expressjet and ASA) didn't connect the West coast, it just offered a few destinations from LAX. We didn't have any Asia flying at that time.

Right now LAX SFO SEA PDX we have no connecting flights

How is Alaska able to connect these destinations and make a profit, but we are unable to do so?

LAX is the only domicile without the 88

The only reason we don't fly the West coast right now is because we have a JV with Alaska...

If the JV is temporary, to buy us time during the downturn, it has my full support.

If the JV is a long-term strategy that might be expanded or duplicated elsewhere it is simply another unintended erosion of Delta pilot flying scope.

Cheers
George


P.S.: Allegiant is expanding like crazy and will make LAX their biggest operating by early next year.

DeadHead

I think this would just lay the ground work for more outsourcing. Basically it would give management a reason to keep smaller planes on hand because they will be both cheaper and easier to staff.

It's not something that would be decided by pilots anyway. I just think these types of rules are over-restrictive and too centralized towards a specific group of pilots. The basis of it hinders towards a national seniority list while unfairly bypassing each companies' seniority lists.

Point in case, how many pilots at DAL currently have less than 5,000 or 10,000 hours TT? Now in addition to waiting for their seniority to be able to hold an upgrade in their choice of base, they also must wait for their Total Time to meet specific guidelines. Now if DAL needs to quickly staff positions they will now need to over-staff the company with street captains/first officers. If it becomes to pricey with all these extra pilots on the payroll who get the ax?