Originally Posted by keenster

Ok, We have a PIRP and get around 220 guys to go early. The company spends 9 months of full pay as an incentive to go early. That adds up to alot of bucks. Now we are going to hire 250 guys off the street and train them. That adds up to alot of bucks. These 2 items alone seem to indicate that someone somewhere does not know what the heck is going on with respect to the future of this company. Another example, the company displaces 60-70 fos off the 744 in Jan and then in May put 20 capts on and 50 fos back on the aircraft. It sure seems that the tail is wagging the dog around here. Alot of displacement training cost and then cost to put guys back on the aircraft. I'm sure Pineapple loves all this money the company is throwing around, but then they will ask us for pay cuts when things get tough again. Who holds them accountable for bad business decisions they make and want us to pay for????? Just an observation, but it sure seems that DAL throws money around and is way more wasteful than fNWA. I am saying this because I am concerned about the health of this company. We are carrying around on average 7500-10000 pounds of fuel over what we used to land with on the old flight plan system. That adds up to alot of fuel burned to carry extra fuel. Nobody seems to care. We had a guy no show his trip to start this trip. Nobody seem to care that no one was there. They did not even know the other capt was not there. Had we not called at 1 hour before departure, we would have canceled the flight. I am just saying that this operation sure appears to be a ship with a lot of small leaks in the hull. The question is: are they fixing the leaks or are they going to get alot bigger and sink the ship? I think that as a company we have much bigger issues in front of us than what aircraft is being parked and what base is being opened or closed, and this aircraft should not be flying in this base. It's the typical worring about the **** ants while the elephant stomps on you. To me the operation needs to become lean, mean and efficient. I don't get that feeling now!

Originally Posted by keenster

To be fair, I think that the new flight plan has something to do with the excess fuel at destination. We're landing with much more than the flight plan projects. I also think the min fuel for departure vs block fuel has something to do with it in that we are somewhat above the min fuel for departure fuel in most cases. I must be going nuts I am posting to my own post.

Originally Posted by Scoop

Keenster,
[COLOR=black]

I have seen us (DAL) leave non-reving crewmembers behind when the door was closed 2 minutes early. CAPT puts up token resistance but acquiesces to the gate agent - this is sad.

So Keenster - I agree we as a company do a lot of stupid things, but we are not in management. We can make suggestions, write CORs, go above and beyond, which I used to do, but have pretty given up on.

Scoop

Originally Posted by Nosmo King

I have seen Captains stand in the jetway talking on the jetway phone to dispatch/maintenance/meteorology until all the seats are filled and the XCMs and XFAs are filled.

Originally Posted by georgetg

It takes about 1-2 months of fuel burn data for FPS 2.0 to dial in on each tail numbers actual burn. When the winglets were put on the -800 the same thing happened but the fuel was a bit short.

I think they load a baseline burn and use actual date to get it down to the last few pounds, but it takes a few cycles of data to get it right...

I would expect to see razorsharp fuel caculatins 2 months from now and you'll be complaining how tight the fuel calcs are ;-)

You giving you a hard time, my man...

Cheers
George

Originally Posted by Nosmo King

This may be true. On the 330 we no longer check/edit the Performance index during preflight. Note its not the cost index, its the perf index for each ship and how much better or worse it does compared to a "standard" 330.

I asked about this on day one of AWABS conversion and was told they were using "standard" fuel burn rates.

3 days later I ran into some computer guys in NRT in the flight planning room. They called ATL and were told that performance engineering tracks perf index behind the scenes.

Either way, it sure does NOT help the FMS fuel burn accuracy when you get a reroute or a change of Alternate or a enroute divert. Hopefully no one plays around with the values that have been in there before the merger, but theres always ppl that will play with that stuff.

Originally Posted by BigGuns

Keenster... You're a north guy maybe you can answer why nearly every FNWA crewed a/c I see parked at the gate has the APU running even if departure time is over 30mins away? Nearly every crew I fly with doesn’t start the APU till they AWABS chime goes off, or 5ish mins prior to push. That's a big waste. Last week at the gate next to us a south 757 was sitting next to us with the APU running, with power and air hooked up 40mins before dept. I bet the CA a NWA crew is flying that plane, b/c it seems they always have the APUs running. So we logged into i-crew pulled the crew names and you guessed it DTW pilots on their way to ATL.

Not only does it waste fuel, but also it makes the walk a round louder.

Originally Posted by Scoop

Keenster,
If you are saying that management does a lot of stupid things - I will agree with you. Sometimes it is not their fault, and at other times it is sheer stupidity, but either way it is management’s responsibility to run this company.
My biggest gripe with management is that they do not want to empower front line employees, but instead try to micromanage us. This whole D-0 emphasis is ridiculous. We understand, on time arrivals are important, but why not give the pilots and gate agents a little flexibility to adapt instead of trying to manage with formulas.

Example 1: Flight from SFO to ATL - You are pushing back and 10 passengers show up at the gate. The gate agent says you cannot wait for them. Well maybe you have 25 tight international connections and this is the correct answer.

Example 2: Last flight of the night from ATL to TPA. Same situation 10 passengers arrive just as the door is closed. We leave without them even though it is Delta's fault they are late - no connections in TPA and we are planned in 5 minutes early so we could take the passengers and still be on time. But because our gate agents are not empowered and trained to think for themselves we leave the passengers, they get a hotel, force the flight tomorrow morning to buy off other passengers etc.

Great companies train and empower employees to take responsibility and make decisions and adapt to changing conditions. DAL has decided to micromanage front line employees and take away all discretion - this will only hurt us in the long run.

I realize that we need to be managed, but not micromanaged – there is a big difference. And if we are to be micromanaged at least make it sensible.

Some bean counter realized that if we put 100% emphasis on D-0 our on time performance may rise 2 points and we will go from 17 out of 19 to 16 out of 19. Maybe, but at what cost?

I have seen us (DAL) leave non-reving crewmembers behind when the door was closed 2 minutes early. CAPT puts up token resistance but acquiesces to the gate agent - this is sad.

So Keenster - I agree we as a company do a lot of stupid things, but we are not in management. We can make suggestions, write CORs, go above and beyond, which I used to do, but have pretty given up on.

Scoop

Originally Posted by georgetg

It takes about 1-2 months of fuel burn data for FPS 2.0 to dial in on each tail number's actual burn. When the winglets were put on the -800 the same thing happened but the fuel was a bit short.

I think they load a baseline burn and use actual burn to get it down to the last few pounds, but it takes a few cycles of data to get it right...

I would expect to see razorsharp fuel caculations 2 months from now and you'll be complaining how tight the fuel calcs are ;-)

You giving you a hard time, my man...

Cheers
George

Originally Posted by Scoop

Nosmo,

I have also seen Captains say "Put the non-revs on" and for the most part the gate agent used to do this. More and more, I am seeing the Gate agents outright refuse - and I have never seen a Captain get them to change their mind when this was the case. Hopefully this is the exception and not the norm - but I think Captains authority is being whittled away.

Scoop