Any "Latest & Greatest" about Delta?
04-04-2010, 01:49 PM
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Joined APC: Jun 2007
Position: Legacy FO
Posts: 4,099
I've been to Manas several times. Great place with incredible mountainous views, very nice locals, extremely aggressive runway (it'll chatter your teeth!).
04-04-2010, 01:51 PM
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Joined APC: Mar 2010
Position: SLC 767ER Captain
Posts: 602
04-04-2010, 01:58 PM
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Joined APC: Mar 2010
Position: SLC 767ER Captain
Posts: 602
OK JugHead, that mug shot scared my 7 year old daughter. 
04-04-2010, 01:59 PM
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Like most concessions the vacation actually evolved over several contracts. We started out with touching trips dropped on all vacations with all days on trips that touched vacation paid on the primary and secondary. Tertiary and Quatenary only days within the vacation were paid. We then went to a system where you got a max of 12 days paid that fell outside the vacations on touching trips. This was to counter the 10 and 12 day trips we were flying to the Orient and Europe in the early 90's. Then we went to a hour bank and the value of the vacation day decreased in the 1113 process. To put it all into perspective if we went back to the original system a bid would have to be posted for about 900 Captains.
We also once paid Greenslips as double credit and pay. Fly a 4 day greenslip and you normally ended up having to drop two trips!
We have lost far more jobs to work rules then RJ's.
We also once paid Greenslips as double credit and pay. Fly a 4 day greenslip and you normally ended up having to drop two trips!
We have lost far more jobs to work rules then RJ's.
I understand your main point about the massive number of job losses to work rules and I agree wholeheartedly. I am little more uncertain of your quantitative statement comparing the effects of work rule changes to scope relaxations.
Maybe we lost more jobs to work rules and maybe we didn’t – if we did I wouldn’t think it was “far more” but this is hard to quantify. More importantly I feel you are comparing apples to oranges.
Work rule improvements from the company point of view or concessions (Pilot point of view) depending on how you want to look at it, should in theory help the company become more competitive, more profitable and grow – thus creating a beneficial need for more pilots. This would in turn provides a return to stockholders and pilots in the form of profits and profit sharing. Outsourcing to RJs on the other hand allows the company to grow with no direct benefit to the pilots or the stockholders for that matter. If you consider that our fee for departure connection carriers have been making profits while DAL has been losing millions you can say that not only have we been outsourcing jobs we are also outsourcing profits.
This is not meant to be an RJ bashing post either. One could argue that RJs provide valuable feed to the hubs enabling DAL to better utilize our large aircraft more efficiently thus minimizing what would have otherwise been larger losses. I would agree that to a certain point there is a definite need for RJs in the system and up to this point RJs may actually improve profitability. I believe however, that we are actually operating RJs on the back end of the power curve so to speak and it is hurting profitablity. If you look at some of the routes that we currently operate RJs on you can see that management has gone totally overboard in their zeal to outsource our flying. Not to mention the contradiction in trying to establish a distinctive DAL “brand” while outsourcing to multiple lowest bidder service providers. We can shoot for a brand providing premium service or we can shoot for lower costs via outsourcing and consequently lower quality but we can not do both.
And finally if RJs are so efficient and self financing as our management loves to tell us – why hasn’t a branded RJ operation taken over the domestic market? Where are all the independent RJ operators? Southwest makes consistently more profits then any other US carrier and flies exclusively domestic – why can’t an RJ only operator do the same? I do not know the answer to that question for certain but logically just follow the money – If RJs could make more money then mainline aircraft threre would be RJ only airlines blanketing the US market by now.
Sorry for the rambling post - Scoop
Last edited by johnso29; 04-04-2010 at 02:46 PM. Reason: fixed quote
04-04-2010, 02:02 PM
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Position: 737n/FO
Posts: 667
04-04-2010, 02:07 PM
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Posts: 19,423
Alfa: I can agree slightly in part given that the vacation bank can have more or less value depending on the value assigned per day, but mostly I must respectfully disagree. I will number my points in my endeavor to project my thoughts.
1) The value of a vacation day would have to be off the charts to ever compare with what we had before. This will NEVER, EVER happen. It is, and always will be, concessionary.
2) Countering your next point. If we are to use this vacation bank as you say “a leveling mechanism,” should we in addition just abandon the seniority list and pay everybody the same, and have a lottery to determine who gets what aircraft and seat position? Does a 35 year pilot not deserve more pay, more choices, more vacation, etc, than say a 5 year pilot, or should we all be entitled to exactly the same values for everything? That’s why we gain additional weeks of vacation as we gain seniority.
3) OMG! The vacation sell back is precisely how management duped the pilot group into this concession in the first place. They smartly used our natural innate pilot greed against us. This is one of those times I was referring to that management made us look like a bunch of buffoons. Even one of my best friends bit off on this line and hook until we discussed it in detail. As was pointed out earlier, if the old system were in use, it would probably generate 900 more Captains for us and give ALL of us more time off. You do the math. Incidentally, management would love how you described the vacation pay out as “EXTRA CASH.”
3b) Definition of Vacation Bank: Forfeiture of one’s vacation in an attempt to recapture one’s voluntarily lost pay. Translation: Oh goody, I get to work more but at least I get paid for it. Or did I?
4) With the old system in place, 900 more Captains on the list would not necessarily equate to more pay. It would equate to the same pay for much less work. Seriously, I remember Captains taking 2 or 3 months off at a time with full pay. Those were the days when men were men, and OK, I’d better not even go there. LOLOLOL
5) Alfa, I enjoy your rebuttals and fencing with you. Keep those cards and letters coming. And remember, you can be my wingman anytime. Ha Ha
1) The value of a vacation day would have to be off the charts to ever compare with what we had before. This will NEVER, EVER happen. It is, and always will be, concessionary.
2) Countering your next point. If we are to use this vacation bank as you say “a leveling mechanism,” should we in addition just abandon the seniority list and pay everybody the same, and have a lottery to determine who gets what aircraft and seat position? Does a 35 year pilot not deserve more pay, more choices, more vacation, etc, than say a 5 year pilot, or should we all be entitled to exactly the same values for everything? That’s why we gain additional weeks of vacation as we gain seniority.
3) OMG! The vacation sell back is precisely how management duped the pilot group into this concession in the first place. They smartly used our natural innate pilot greed against us. This is one of those times I was referring to that management made us look like a bunch of buffoons. Even one of my best friends bit off on this line and hook until we discussed it in detail. As was pointed out earlier, if the old system were in use, it would probably generate 900 more Captains for us and give ALL of us more time off. You do the math. Incidentally, management would love how you described the vacation pay out as “EXTRA CASH.”
3b) Definition of Vacation Bank: Forfeiture of one’s vacation in an attempt to recapture one’s voluntarily lost pay. Translation: Oh goody, I get to work more but at least I get paid for it. Or did I?
4) With the old system in place, 900 more Captains on the list would not necessarily equate to more pay. It would equate to the same pay for much less work. Seriously, I remember Captains taking 2 or 3 months off at a time with full pay. Those were the days when men were men, and OK, I’d better not even go there. LOLOLOL
5) Alfa, I enjoy your rebuttals and fencing with you. Keep those cards and letters coming. And remember, you can be my wingman anytime. Ha Ha
I agree with everything you have posted. You also left out one very key point that mangagement loves!!!
VACATION IS PAY NO CREDIT!!!!!
The only way you could state the vacation bank is not a huge concession regardless of the hour value of each day is to make vacation PAY AND CREDIT!!!
If we changed vacation to pay and credit tomorrow a massive bid would have to be posted the next day. Seniority still plays in vacation. The senior guys bid high time trips and then pick up another trip or two all around their vacation. This is allowed since its pay no credit. It amounts to exactly the same thing as selling your vacation back to the company and not using it. Making vacation true time off by changing it to Pay and credit will be high on my contract wish list. I suspect however I will be in the minority. If it came to pass however I would move up a category and work fewer days and make the same money.
04-04-2010, 02:10 PM
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Joined APC: Mar 2010
Position: SLC 767ER Captain
Posts: 602
Alright, just because it is Easter and everyone is flying, doesn't mean you guys don't have to listen to me rant and rave like a crazy man. 
Anyone there?
Anyone there?
04-04-2010, 02:10 PM
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Joined APC: Dec 2009
Position: 737n/FO
Posts: 667
I just did my first domestic trip since IOE 2 years ago. LGA-ATL-LAS, LAS-ATL-MCO, MCO-ATL-LGA and I was exhausted when I got home. So, I can kinda see the angst by the DTW pilots with their bid package. DAL uses a vendor called Carmen that builds our trips legally and efficiently to the Company's benefit. A lot of our trips suck such as the infamous JFK-BOG all-nighter down and all-nighter back 16 hours later. It took me 2 days to recover from that-most sicked out trip in the bid package. Which means if the DTW trips are that bad-just look at the sick out rates on them in 2-3 months and VOILA! they will change.
You know that's something that needs to be addressed. I agree with you that what happens is guys get worn out by lousy trip construction in the name of efficiency. And I for one am not afraid to call in sick if I'm not fit to fly when I got worn out and sick from a poorly constructed 3 or 4 day trip. The worst is when they attempt to invert your body clock within 24 hours (east or west coast). You fly a red-eye out of the west coast and have to turn around and get up 22-24 hours later. Take off out of LAX at 10-11 pm west coast time and turn around for 0700 show on the east coast (0300 wake up) to come back and get paid 10 hours for the 3 day trip. If you have to do it more than once a month (with it only paying 10 hours you have a lot of work to do) there is no way you're not exhausted. I sure it's the same way with an east coast guy flying a west coast red-eye. There are more and more of these types of trips.
04-04-2010, 02:13 PM
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Joined APC: Feb 2008
Posts: 19,423
Like most concessions the vacation actually evolved over several contracts. We started out with touching trips dropped on all vacations with all days on trips that touched vacation paid on the primary and secondary. Tertiary and Quatenary only days within the vacation were paid. We then went to a system where you got a max of 12 days paid that fell outside the vacations on touching trips. This was to counter the 10 and 12 day trips we were flying to the Orient and Europe in the early 90's. Then we went to a hour bank and the value of the vacation day decreased in the 1113 process. To put it all into perspective if we went back to the original system a bid would have to be posted for about 900 Captains.
We also once paid Greenslips as double credit and pay. Fly a 4 day greenslip and you normally ended up having to drop two trips!
We have lost far more jobs to work rules then RJ's.[/quote]
Sailing,
I understand your main point about the massive number of job losses to work rules and I agree wholeheartedly. I am little more uncertain of your quantitative statement comparing the effects of work rule changes to scope relaxations.
Maybe we lost more jobs to work rules and maybe we didn’t – if we did I wouldn’t think it was “far more” but this is hard to quantify. More importantly I feel you are comparing apples to oranges.
Work rule improvements from the company point of view or concessions (Pilot point of view) depending on how you want to look at it, should in theory help the company become more competitive, more profitable and grow – thus creating a beneficial need for more pilots. This would in turn provides a return to stockholders and pilots in the form of profits and profit sharing. Outsourcing to RJs on the other hand allows the company to grow with no direct benefit to the pilots or the stockholders for that matter. If you consider that our fee for departure connection carriers have been making profits while DAL has been losing millions you can say that not only have we been outsourcing jobs we are also outsourcing profits.
This is not meant to be an RJ bashing post either. One could argue that RJs provide valuable feed to the hubs enabling DAL to better utilize our large aircraft more efficiently thus minimizing what would have otherwise been larger losses. I would agree that to a certain point – there is a definite need for RJs in the system and up to this point RJs may actually improve profitability. I believe however, that we are actually operating RJs on the back end of the power curve so to speak and it is hurting profitablity. If you look at some of the routes that we currently operate RJs on you can see that management has gone totally overboard in their zeal to outsource our flying. Not to mention the contradiction in trying to establish a distinctive DAL “brand” while outsourcing to multiple lowest bidder service providers. We can shoot for a brand providing premium service or we can shoot for lower costs via outsourcing and consequently lower quality but we can not do both.
And finally if RJs are so efficient and self financing as our management loves to tell us – why hasn’t a branded RJ operation taken over the domestic market? Where are all the independent RJ operators? Southwest makes consistently more profits then any other US carrier and flies exclusively domestic – why can’t an RJ only operator do the same? I do not answer to that question for certain but logically just follow the money – If RJs could make more money then mainline aircraft threre would be RJ only airlines blanketing the US market by now.
Sorry for the rambling post - Scoop
We also once paid Greenslips as double credit and pay. Fly a 4 day greenslip and you normally ended up having to drop two trips!
We have lost far more jobs to work rules then RJ's.[/quote]
Sailing,
I understand your main point about the massive number of job losses to work rules and I agree wholeheartedly. I am little more uncertain of your quantitative statement comparing the effects of work rule changes to scope relaxations.
Maybe we lost more jobs to work rules and maybe we didn’t – if we did I wouldn’t think it was “far more” but this is hard to quantify. More importantly I feel you are comparing apples to oranges.
Work rule improvements from the company point of view or concessions (Pilot point of view) depending on how you want to look at it, should in theory help the company become more competitive, more profitable and grow – thus creating a beneficial need for more pilots. This would in turn provides a return to stockholders and pilots in the form of profits and profit sharing. Outsourcing to RJs on the other hand allows the company to grow with no direct benefit to the pilots or the stockholders for that matter. If you consider that our fee for departure connection carriers have been making profits while DAL has been losing millions you can say that not only have we been outsourcing jobs we are also outsourcing profits.
This is not meant to be an RJ bashing post either. One could argue that RJs provide valuable feed to the hubs enabling DAL to better utilize our large aircraft more efficiently thus minimizing what would have otherwise been larger losses. I would agree that to a certain point – there is a definite need for RJs in the system and up to this point RJs may actually improve profitability. I believe however, that we are actually operating RJs on the back end of the power curve so to speak and it is hurting profitablity. If you look at some of the routes that we currently operate RJs on you can see that management has gone totally overboard in their zeal to outsource our flying. Not to mention the contradiction in trying to establish a distinctive DAL “brand” while outsourcing to multiple lowest bidder service providers. We can shoot for a brand providing premium service or we can shoot for lower costs via outsourcing and consequently lower quality but we can not do both.
And finally if RJs are so efficient and self financing as our management loves to tell us – why hasn’t a branded RJ operation taken over the domestic market? Where are all the independent RJ operators? Southwest makes consistently more profits then any other US carrier and flies exclusively domestic – why can’t an RJ only operator do the same? I do not answer to that question for certain but logically just follow the money – If RJs could make more money then mainline aircraft threre would be RJ only airlines blanketing the US market by now.
Sorry for the rambling post - Scoop
Much of what you post is correct. Many pilots forget that most RJ's still feed the mainline. There is however one thing that can be quantified in this discussion.
We peaked in pilot jobs in 2001. In June 07 before the merger we were flying almost exactly the same number of total pilot block hours as we had in 2001. However we were doing it with 7000 pilots instead of 10,000. There is only one possible explanation for that. Work rule changes. I once saw a breakdown of estimated jobs tied to each concession. 3000 was about right. Some concessions were hundreds of jobs each however what really got lost in the details is that there were around 100 small concessions that each might only be 5 to 25 jobs system wide. If they average 15 pilots lost per change however that is 1500 jobs before you get to the big stuff!.
There is another way to quantifiy this also. Pilots are now flying on average about 25 percent more block hours then in the past. In the 90's most Delta pilots flew about 600 block hours per year. That number is now around 800.
Thats 2500 jobs lost from a 10,000 pilot work force. The other 500 jobs were because we were over staffed in 01 and the eliminated the overage.
If you want to see advancement start thinking work rules in the next contract. Start thinking about real vacation that can't be sold or worked around. Start thinking about real caps with real limits. Tied to up coming retirements movement at Delta would be like a rocket ride if it came to pass.
Last edited by johnso29; 04-04-2010 at 02:44 PM.
04-04-2010, 02:20 PM
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Joined APC: Dec 2009
Position: 737n/FO
Posts: 667
I once heard TWA was a pilot run airline and therefore a pilots airline, a great place to work. I'm not saying that Delta is a pilots airline per se, but I will say I think the Delta pilots turned it into a great place for pilots to work... right up until 2005 from what they all say. And they're proud of what they made, what they and those long before them fought for and fought against even if they are not happy with what it is now. And notice that frustration is directed a lot towards DALPA, right or wrong.
Heck, you hear a lot of guys rip previous management teams and the Delta way of doing things but they still love Delta, why the disconnect? Because they see Delta as their airline, not managements.
That is strictly a imho, and fwiw, the quicker we become the great melting pot the better 2012 will be.
Heck, you hear a lot of guys rip previous management teams and the Delta way of doing things but they still love Delta, why the disconnect? Because they see Delta as their airline, not managements.
That is strictly a imho, and fwiw, the quicker we become the great melting pot the better 2012 will be.
.
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