Any "Latest & Greatest" about Delta?
09-27-2009, 03:12 PM
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Aug 2008
Posts: 799
The combined Delta carries about 180 million passengers per year, with total passenger revenue of about $24 billion. That works out to about $130 per passenger ticket. To return to C2K levels at Delta (not just compensation, but including work rules and retirement) would require each of those passengers to pay an additional $10 per ticket, or an 8% increase in cost.
MD 88 - 142 seats
MD 88 + $10.00 per ticket = $1420.00 of additional revenue per flight. (I know not every seat is full).
MD 88 average leg length - 2.0 hours ?
Seems like the pilot pay would be sustantially higher than C2k. Yes, I know work rules cost $$$, although I was under the impression Delta didn't give up much in the way of work rules.
Not that you're wrong, $10.00 per ticket just seems high.
09-27-2009, 03:25 PM
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jul 2006
Position: Boeing Hearing and Ergonomics Lab Rat, Night Shift
Posts: 1,724
Why Airline Mergers Don't Work: Scale Is Not a Blessing 
Why Airline Mergers Don't Work: Scale Is Not a Blessing -- Seeking Alpha
Why Airline Mergers Don't Work: Scale Is Not a Blessing -- Seeking Alpha
"DISCLOSURE: Tom Konrad and/or his clients have short positions in DAL."
Most of these guys have opinions that typically are aligned with their own financial interests, they just need enough people to "buy what they're selling" to come out ahead...
Cheers
George
Last edited by georgetg; 09-27-2009 at 03:26 PM. Reason: bold italics for emphasis
09-27-2009, 04:46 PM
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jan 2009
Position: MD-80 FO
Posts: 100
A thought about the post above. Even WITH the "savings", we were threatened with BK. Our union pres and BOD peed their pants and caved giving management a BK contract outside of BK. IOW, even having a substantial "savings" didn't save us from impending financial ruin.
Also, I don't trust even one paragraph of any airline's financial claims. My airline claimed to be around 23 billion in LT debt a few years ago. After several losing quarters and a couple quarters of tepid positive returns....POOF!, magically we were only 12 billion in LT debt. Where did the cash come from?
Recently, every analyst out there said that there was a "good chance" AMR would be in BK by the end of the year. POOF! Magically around 3 BILLION (or more) in financing, restructuring, and other financial chicanery appears virtually overnight.
Bottom line is, the highly complex issues of finance in a huge corporation like AMR or DAL is waaaaayyyyyy above our pay grade. Just because they say it doesn't make it true. What do you want to bet that before the ink is dry on a new, lousy TA that these airlines will magically "find" a ton of cash, the stock will rise exponentially, and the executive bonuses will flow freely?
Good luck to all of us.
09-27-2009, 05:53 PM
Can't abide NAI
Joined APC: Jun 2007
Position: Douglas Aerospace post production Flight Test & Work Around Engineering bulletin dissembler
Posts: 12,037
post deleted
Last edited by Bucking Bar; 09-27-2009 at 08:06 PM. Reason: Just no point
09-27-2009, 06:40 PM
At home on the maddog!
Joined APC: Mar 2009
Position: ATL MD-88A
Posts: 2,874
I don't mean to but into your affairs here but....
I hear the same thing on the APA wailing wall - "it's unrealistic to get a 50% raise right now."
The sad part is, whenever asked to expand upon such reasoning, a well-reasoned answer has been elusive. Instead, an emotional answer usually ensues.
When you actually look at the actual cost of what it would take to restore your (and mine) contracts to a level reflecting the 2000 UAL and DAL TAs, we are talking basically about adding 5 bucks to a passengers ticket.
The usual response to that is, "we need to be competitive." Well, yes, but you are assuming that all of the other carriers will not follow suit. AA pilots are gunning for pay that is near DAL 2000 levels, and that is just pay. UAL opens soon, and everything I have seen and heard points to UAL 2000 rates plus "interest."
How is your airline "uncompetitive" if everyone is making basically the same money? Southwest and the cargo carriers are already paying way more. How is it WN is able to pay so much and yet financially clean everyone's clock? How is it that carriers like Skybus go out of business paying their employees peanuts? Can you name a carrier that has ever been put into ch. 7 due to pilot costs?
Lastly, if you could make a list of some of the more egregious ways management has wasted money, you will quickly eclipse the dollar figure of any pilot pay increase package. Why is it "not realistic" for you to get paid what you are worth, but "realistic" for management to waste 10s of millions on ineptitude?
It is managements job to pass the pay on to customers and to manage an airline with the competence of a pro worth the 10s of million they pay themselves. This is THEIR problem. By opening with "it's not realistic", you have lost the battle before it begins.
I hear the same thing on the APA wailing wall - "it's unrealistic to get a 50% raise right now."
The sad part is, whenever asked to expand upon such reasoning, a well-reasoned answer has been elusive. Instead, an emotional answer usually ensues.
When you actually look at the actual cost of what it would take to restore your (and mine) contracts to a level reflecting the 2000 UAL and DAL TAs, we are talking basically about adding 5 bucks to a passengers ticket.
The usual response to that is, "we need to be competitive." Well, yes, but you are assuming that all of the other carriers will not follow suit. AA pilots are gunning for pay that is near DAL 2000 levels, and that is just pay. UAL opens soon, and everything I have seen and heard points to UAL 2000 rates plus "interest."
How is your airline "uncompetitive" if everyone is making basically the same money? Southwest and the cargo carriers are already paying way more. How is it WN is able to pay so much and yet financially clean everyone's clock? How is it that carriers like Skybus go out of business paying their employees peanuts? Can you name a carrier that has ever been put into ch. 7 due to pilot costs?
Lastly, if you could make a list of some of the more egregious ways management has wasted money, you will quickly eclipse the dollar figure of any pilot pay increase package. Why is it "not realistic" for you to get paid what you are worth, but "realistic" for management to waste 10s of millions on ineptitude?
It is managements job to pass the pay on to customers and to manage an airline with the competence of a pro worth the 10s of million they pay themselves. This is THEIR problem. By opening with "it's not realistic", you have lost the battle before it begins.
I'm a big believer in not allowing our expectations to be managed (and I think that the strategy of the Delta MEC has resulted in a lot of expectations being managed). I guess your post shows me that even my expectations have been managed to a degree. Another part of the problem is that, with our present MEC, I don't believe it is realistic to get full restoration. With new leadership (which I hope we are about to get), then maybe we can get everyone on board and focused on true restoration of our profession. I like APA's approach and think that approach will be more successful in the long run. We should be working together, IMO.
09-27-2009, 06:42 PM
Happy to be here
Joined APC: Jun 2006
Position: A-320A
Posts: 18,563
Good post Bar, I would like to see what it is.
I also think that many people would be happy to fly a 70+ seat jet with a DAL seniority number, even if the compensation did not compute using the current formula.
I also think that many people would be happy to fly a 70+ seat jet with a DAL seniority number, even if the compensation did not compute using the current formula.
09-27-2009, 06:58 PM
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2008
Posts: 2,539
Not sure those #'s are accurate. We don't have the pension obligations of years prior. Do you have any numbers to substantiate that statement?
MD 88 - 142 seats
MD 88 + $10.00 per ticket = $1420.00 of additional revenue per flight. (I know not every seat is full).
MD 88 average leg length - 2.0 hours ?
Seems like the pilot pay would be sustantially higher than C2k. Yes, I know work rules cost $$$, although I was under the impression Delta didn't give up much in the way of work rules.
Not that you're wrong, $10.00 per ticket just seems high.
MD 88 - 142 seats
MD 88 + $10.00 per ticket = $1420.00 of additional revenue per flight. (I know not every seat is full).
MD 88 average leg length - 2.0 hours ?
Seems like the pilot pay would be sustantially higher than C2k. Yes, I know work rules cost $$$, although I was under the impression Delta didn't give up much in the way of work rules.
Not that you're wrong, $10.00 per ticket just seems high.
I'm going from memory tonight, but this is what I recollect.
MD-88 Captain is a pretty good average rate for all pilots. The median longevity now is over 12 years.
Delta's average seats per flight is approximately 160, giving approximately $1600 in incremental revenue possible at a $10 per flight increase. Average trip block hour is a little more than 3 hours. Our load factor for the year averages around 80% of late, so the per block hour incremental revenue result would be about $430. One major manning cost factor is that the average number of pilots per flight is somewhat greater than 2 (all the augmented flights (3 and 4 man, including over 8 hour turn domestic double crewed flights) plus line checks. My guess is our planes are actually staffed at about 2.25 pilots per aircraft block hour (that might be a little low). The other manning cost factors that are missing include credit time/reserve/sick/LTD/vacation costs. We're currently over 25% staffed with reserves, an average of 4% of our pilots are out on disability, and we use about 40-50 hours of sick leave per year (including those that ultimately go on disability). Let's call that 4% of the average pilots line that is paid but not flown. Vacation averages about 80 hours per pilot, so conservatively that's another 10% of paid time not flown. There is also cost associated with supervisory, administrative, and instructor pilots (about 150 pilots). My guess is that all in there are almost 3 pilots paid for every aircraft block hour flown at Delta. Using current MD-88 pay as an average for the Delta fleet, that would be $450 per block hour.
C2K provided about a 60% premium over current rates. It also required about 8% more pilots because it didn't contain PBS. There was a cap on flight hours per pilot, reducing pilot manning over similar block hours by about 6-7%. Another huge savings was in the south retirement plan. DB plan funding would have required a conservative $300 million/year all in to recover from the hole the plan was in (that includes the losses experienced by all the current south retirees). That was partially offset by the increase in DC funding from 11% to 14% during this contract.
Some of the other cost shifted to pilots include:
increase for DPMP from 25%(?) to 40%
vacation from 3+15 to 3+00, and loss of 2 days on the front end
Sick leave cutback to 75% pay after an average of 100 hours per year
I'm sure you can think of a bunch more.
So my math may be wrong, but I figure that if you increase the total required number of pilots by 15%, added 60% pay increase to that new number (that's a 84% increase in pilot payroll total, or about $360 of your hourly incremental revenue), then added in the retirement funding and all the other cutbacks you'd get pretty close to the $10 per ticket figure.
Last edited by slowplay; 09-27-2009 at 07:09 PM.
09-27-2009, 08:14 PM
Can't abide NAI
Joined APC: Jun 2007
Position: Douglas Aerospace post production Flight Test & Work Around Engineering bulletin dissembler
Posts: 12,037
I think our MEC has done a very good job capitalizing on opportunities outside of Section 6 to get us better compensation. In other news, Holly Hegemon provides a little feedback on the MD80.
I Now Remember Why I Hate MD-80s...
CSM106966
It's those damn seats.
I just flew on American this week to Austin and back. Short flights. Really short flights.
But even so, I was reminded of how positively uncomfortable those seats are on an MD-80. At least for someone who has had hip surgery. And hey, probably for everybody else as well.
Crowded, cramped, and a rather low seat placement with funky back support. That's what it was like.
Ugh.
Of course the flight down to Austin was not helped at all by the fact that the airline refused to hook up the APU and the inside temperature of the aircraft had to be close to 90 degrees. Or more. My ability to put up with a hot aircraft at the gate is very limited to begin with, but this experience was brutal. Especially since, because no one wants to pay to check their bag on American, it seems that everyone drags aboard bags the size of small refrigerators and then tries to cram them in the overheads. This takes time. Lots and lots of time.
Made me think of that goofball Richard Simmons. Here I was, "Sweatin' on an Oldie."
Okay. I've re-upped my American AAdvantage miles account. Paltry as it is.
But you know what? It's going to be a long time before I get on another one of those airplanes.
What can I say? Ever since I had that great education in "passenger space" and what makes a good airline seat and what doesn't when I visited the Boeing Customer Experience Center with David Longridge and Kent Craver showing me the ropes (or rather all the different types of seating configurations) -- I now know it's not just seat pitch.
And boy -- did that lesson come back to bite me in the butt yesterday.
Literally.
CSM106966
It's those damn seats.
I just flew on American this week to Austin and back. Short flights. Really short flights.
But even so, I was reminded of how positively uncomfortable those seats are on an MD-80. At least for someone who has had hip surgery. And hey, probably for everybody else as well.
Crowded, cramped, and a rather low seat placement with funky back support. That's what it was like.
Ugh.
Of course the flight down to Austin was not helped at all by the fact that the airline refused to hook up the APU and the inside temperature of the aircraft had to be close to 90 degrees. Or more. My ability to put up with a hot aircraft at the gate is very limited to begin with, but this experience was brutal. Especially since, because no one wants to pay to check their bag on American, it seems that everyone drags aboard bags the size of small refrigerators and then tries to cram them in the overheads. This takes time. Lots and lots of time.
Made me think of that goofball Richard Simmons. Here I was, "Sweatin' on an Oldie."
Okay. I've re-upped my American AAdvantage miles account. Paltry as it is.
But you know what? It's going to be a long time before I get on another one of those airplanes.
What can I say? Ever since I had that great education in "passenger space" and what makes a good airline seat and what doesn't when I visited the Boeing Customer Experience Center with David Longridge and Kent Craver showing me the ropes (or rather all the different types of seating configurations) -- I now know it's not just seat pitch.
And boy -- did that lesson come back to bite me in the butt yesterday.
Literally.
Last edited by Bucking Bar; 09-27-2009 at 08:45 PM.
09-27-2009, 09:02 PM
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Sep 2008
Position: Kickin’ Back
Posts: 6,971
I didn't say that you need 1800 pilots to pass a resolution. It is great for people to be involved and make their views known. What is wrong is the opinion, "I passed a resolution, so now that is the will of the pilots." In the case of this scope resolution (which, by the way, I have no problem with) there was a concerted effort by a group with a strong feeling about this subject to organize and attend the LEC Meeting with the express purpose of passing this resolution. Great, that is part of democracy. That is not the whole part.
For instance, it wouldn't be hard to organize a large group of people to pack a town hall meeting with my congressman, that all support "xxxxx" position in health care reform. (I use "xxxxx" because I don't want to get into a political discussion about health care). They could get hundreds of people to jam their phone lines, they could make appointment after appointment at his office. Does this mean that "xxxxx" position now has to be the law of the land? Does it even mean that my congressman should have to adopt that position?
It is easy for a highly motivated minority to organize and present a display of overwhelming support when in fact it is not the majority position. Grass roots efforts are one part of the equation but that is not the whole equation. Democracy is not just listening to the loudest voices.
In fact, the founders of the country formed a representational democracy, we don't rule by polls, we rule by sending representatives to government, where hopefully they educate themselves on the issues, listen to ALL their constituents, talk with other representatives, and then make an informed decision.
I support people going to meetings and talking to their reps. If they want to pass a resolution then great. What I have a problem with is when these people now say "I have spoken, do what I say!" Other people speak too and they have to be heard. What we have seen is that after these resolutions have passed, the pilots that organized the resolutions demand that their voices are now the only ones heard and they have to be followed. That is just a little too demanding in my view. What about the rest of the council, do their views not matter at all?
For instance, it wouldn't be hard to organize a large group of people to pack a town hall meeting with my congressman, that all support "xxxxx" position in health care reform. (I use "xxxxx" because I don't want to get into a political discussion about health care). They could get hundreds of people to jam their phone lines, they could make appointment after appointment at his office. Does this mean that "xxxxx" position now has to be the law of the land? Does it even mean that my congressman should have to adopt that position?
It is easy for a highly motivated minority to organize and present a display of overwhelming support when in fact it is not the majority position. Grass roots efforts are one part of the equation but that is not the whole equation. Democracy is not just listening to the loudest voices.
In fact, the founders of the country formed a representational democracy, we don't rule by polls, we rule by sending representatives to government, where hopefully they educate themselves on the issues, listen to ALL their constituents, talk with other representatives, and then make an informed decision.
I support people going to meetings and talking to their reps. If they want to pass a resolution then great. What I have a problem with is when these people now say "I have spoken, do what I say!" Other people speak too and they have to be heard. What we have seen is that after these resolutions have passed, the pilots that organized the resolutions demand that their voices are now the only ones heard and they have to be followed. That is just a little too demanding in my view. What about the rest of the council, do their views not matter at all?
Again, I agree with alot of what you say, I bolded the above because that is the basis of this whole discussion. A representative is there to "represent" his constituents to the best of his ability and, as you wrote and I underlined, ALL of his constituents. Yes there may be a vocal minority but look at todays society and tell me vocal minorities do not carry some clout. They do not alway get their way but they are heard and do have influence in a representative government.
I infer from the last sentence of your post that actually their (the silent majority) views do matter (and the reps feel that they are the majority) and that is why this resolution was tabled, otherwise, why was it tabled?
I'm not a member of 44 and am ignorant about the complexities of putting one together, but it does seem like a "scope report card" should not be that big of a deal. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but would it really take that much work to put one out once a quarter? Nobody is trying to change policy that I can see, just trying to stay better informed about what's happening that may effect (effect/affect...did I use the right one?
) their careers. Just a thought, but if a resolution is passed that the LEC reps feel is not backed by the majority, why don't they poll their constituents either by calling themselves or by using Wilson, to find out the true position of the majority? Thanks for the discussion!
Denny
Last edited by Denny Crane; 09-28-2009 at 07:02 AM. Reason: Name correction
09-27-2009, 09:15 PM
Can't abide NAI
Joined APC: Jun 2007
Position: Douglas Aerospace post production Flight Test & Work Around Engineering bulletin dissembler
Posts: 12,037
Denny -
The reason why C44 pilots can't have a scope report card is because Comair pilots would get Date of Hire on the Delta list.
My wife asked me why she could not buy $250 shoes that she'd never wear. I told her "no, because if that happened Comair pilots would get Date of Hire on the Delta list."
My neighbor's kid asked me why I only pay him $40 to mow my grass. I told him that is what the "silent majority" wants and Comair would get Date of Hire on the Delta seniority list.
The kid looked at me strangely, then walked away dejected and I still only pay $40 for grass mowing! Wow, this stuff really works!
The reason why C44 pilots can't have a scope report card is because Comair pilots would get Date of Hire on the Delta list.
My wife asked me why she could not buy $250 shoes that she'd never wear. I told her "no, because if that happened Comair pilots would get Date of Hire on the Delta list."
My neighbor's kid asked me why I only pay him $40 to mow my grass. I told him that is what the "silent majority" wants and Comair would get Date of Hire on the Delta seniority list.
The kid looked at me strangely, then walked away dejected and I still only pay $40 for grass mowing! Wow, this stuff really works!
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
