scambo1

No high yellow. but in the interest of full disclosure, the first trip was a greenslip so it doesn't show on/change the raw value.

IMO, what really happened is while I was trying to roll the thunder, I got caught by capped x days and stuck with where my off days were thereby losing control of anything after that.

scambo1

Most of those books have a proprietary delta blurb in the front of them. Maybe his wife should ebay them.

Scoop

FB,

The stagnation has been very, very frustrating for most of us. Hopefully we will all start moving up - I am at 15 years and still a NB FO (by choice) and would love for this movement to continue.

Yes Sailing and Alfa often take a very positive look at things but that is OK. They have been here longer than most of us and have a lot more history to draw from.

I am just as frustrated when I see guys who have been 6 or 7 years complain how unfair the reserve system is. Reserve used to be 100% seniority weighted. Then seniority was totally removed, and now it is partially weighted - in my opinion a very good compromise system that could still use some fine tuning (SC assignments in particular).

My perspective is not unique - many 1999 and 2000 hires saw a couple of great years, followed by furlough, BK, and the slow crawl back.

I don't always agree with the guys you refer to - Sailing, Alfa, etc, but I do appreciate that they have seen everything we have seen at DAL plus one or two more up and down cycles and so they often have the best perspective on many issues.

Scoop

forgot to bid

Scoop, don't let your frustration with new hires keep you from missing the points being made.

sailingfun

Those are all pilot numbers. I don't have a source for regular or reserve only. I suspect a few phone calls to the company could get them.

forgot to bid

What's a high yellow? Where can one select that option?

RockyBoy

Nothing worse than a rolling thunder attempt gone haywire.

sailingfun

What is interesting is the 2007 hires are perhaps in the position to have the best careers anyone has seen at Delta. Advancement is going to be rapid for a long time. The front loading of the retirement plan via the merger stock is absolutely huge from a retirement standpoint. 150k upfront is easily worth 5 or 6% in yearly contributions over a 30 year career.

Sink r8

My Scoop speaks for me!

Clearly, the Reserve system's trip into a Marxist-Leninist bent post 9/11 was punitive to many pilots that had already pre-paid their dues under the old system, and were subsequently unable to get any credit for their seniority, the value of which plummeted to zero. Our devalued rights, which were converted into some new crap called RAW currency, which was given freely to all. Which made a new hire just as much of a prince or a peasant as anyone else, and so it was that ftb and other newhires got to think of themselves as equally entitled to flying as someone who HAD been furloughed, HAD lost the game of LOW/HIGH yellows when it was their turn, but now couldn't use their seniority at all to compete for flying anymore. We got shafted, but their perspective on this matter was based on the then-existing system of 2007.

So, to the newhires, past dues that went unrewarded went completely unnoticed.

When we finally designed and implemented something better, they 2007 guys cry bitter tears over the fact that there is LITTLE seniority bias to the Reserve system (emphasis on "little"), and they can't bear the thought of losing the artificial equality they had come to live under, never mind that it was an accident of a history they didn't share in. They sure don't mind the fact that a junior guy flies a trip they don't want, but they can't bear the idea of a senior guy sitting a little longer in a different raw bucket. It messes up their brains, this slightly unequal screw-job, even though it is entirely appropriate, and STILL fails to properly pay us back.

My thinking is that when all you're obsessed about is making sure we're all getting screwed equally, you're in the wrong game. When we design a system, as we have that is CLEARLY much better in the aggregate for Reserves we win. And when we design it with a LITTLE seniority bias, we are only doing what is right.

ftb's problem isn't that he got screwed when he was junior (he didn't), is that he has too little respect for those of us that got screwed when we were junior AND when we were more senior.

RockyBoy

Disclaimer.....not complaining here.

Where do you come up with 150K merger stock? Are you assuming that is the value of the merger stock if we did not sell it and still hold it? I'll bet almost all of us dumped that long ago. I sold out at $15/share for about 50K.