forgot to bid

I think they'll furlough at SOC too. Its a hunch. I don't think its just to be evil I think we'll be surplused then. Hopefully I'm wrong.

DAL4EVER

You may be right. But then at least if we furlough, its not one side losing all. Right now DAL is losing more jets to the desert.

forgot to bid

Yeah, I think the further SOC is away the better because as I think we all believe furloughs pre SOC would be a Pandoras Box of problems. Of course, if its too far away that could also backfire on us as well, not sure exactly how but I'm sure there is a tipping point in the other direction.

Ferd149

Interesting looking patterns. Looks like freighter patterns........ie, ANC-HKG and HKG-ICN-ANC on the second pattern.

See you boys at the Jet Lag in Narita

Ferd

PS this is a 767 trip right? Are the GUM-NRT in the bid packets yet?

beer

It is to get the ER to Asia for inspections.. I believe they are all ferry flights.

forgot to bid

Oh yeah, I think you're right. I didn't read it right at all. I finally found one in the rotations and only the ANC-HKG is the only leg flown which is a 7ER and then HKG-ICN-ANC on the other is the only 7ER leg. The others are deadheads between Delta, Northwest and Alaska.

Dirtdiver

I flew part of one of these last year. Heavy MX in Hong Kong. Our mx guys claim they do great work there, worth the ferrying. Surprisingly, way better than Air Canada's work in Vancouver, which this replaced.

acl65pilot

One the MEH deal.
Ask any one in management about what ifs. They will tell you that NWA wrote off their investment in MEH before the merger. Off the top of my head I think they did it in the second quarter of 08. The union also states that NWA did this as well. That is the "official" line. Sorry!

What we do after the doors close is a different story. I am betting that even though the investment was written off, we with a 49% stake have right of first refusal on a few things like gates. Just a guess.

acl65pilot

As it pertains to SOC. The info that DAL4 has is what I have. What they are telling the dispatchers is something different than they are saying in the school house, and it is something different than they are telling our DGS staff and mechanics.
Point is that there is a lot of fluff. I can tell you that I had the NWA dispatch rep on my JS last month. He is responsible for the transition of their dispatch to our system. He told me that his job of making the change over would be done by this summer. He also stated that they are actively looking to move them to ATL.
Now OCC needs a major rework for all of the stations, but there is a lot of room there that they can use. Radio and such will be moved out of the room. It sounded like this was a patch to the long term fix. That takes time.
That said, he figured that we could join ops later this year.
That does not mean we will.
Think of this. If we need to trim our workforce, it is a lot easier to drag our feet on SOC. This holds true with us. DAL's economic modeling shows passenger traffic recovering in late 2010 or early 2011. They may opt to wait and have both sides shed positions prior to SOC and then finish the SOC process after this is done.
As with our contract they can in effect furlough more bodies prior to SOC then before. (Read all of the new hires of 07 and 08) It gets a lot more costly to do this after SOC. It would be very difficult for them to furlough all of the pilots before the end of the year. If they pushed off SOC they could do this in a regulated manner and then accomplish SOC.
I am not stating that this will happen. I am just giving you a different look at the puzzle and its possibilities.

Scottyr6

Didn't know which forum to post this under, but it seams like a lot of the guys "in the know" are on here frequently. For guys hired at NWA in Feb of 08 what are we currently getting for retirement? Is it the 9% DCC plus the 2% DPP that goes into Fidelity or something else.